


District 66

by Vorvayne



Series: Mirrorism [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, PTSD, Sexual Violence, Yumichika and Ikkaku - first meeting, Yumichika backstory, lots of trigger warnings, mentions of torture, messed-up thinking, really messed-up BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 13:26:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vorvayne/pseuds/Vorvayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing Yumichika ever becomes really, really good at is sex. It's not exactly intentional at first. </p><p>When Yumichika first arrives in district 66 - where life is hard but at least no one will gut you for a jar of water, probably - he's a teenager, slim and pretty and starving. </p><p>This is what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my god, well it's finally posted. If you follow my tumblr, you'll know I've been writing this thing for *weeks*, and also crying, tearing my hair out, and posting about it a lot. I hope the end result is worth it. 
> 
> Heaps and heaps of thanks to 7emptymirrors, taydev, thecopperscales, w3djyt and theoccultdawn, who replied to my daft posts and cheered me on lots and lots and lots. Also to junko, who let me ramble a lot at her about zanpakuto and how the rukongai even works. 
> 
> Hugs, tears, cookies and anything else she wants to my beloved Lucymonster, who went so far beyond the call of duty helping me through this fic that it's practically co-authored, and wouldn't even exist without her. Your tears were not in vain. 
> 
> Regarding trigger warnings: this is not a nice fic. There is rape and torture and abuse dynamics and PTSD and general messed up thinking, and though I have done my best to keep it from getting gratuitously awful or graphic, I'd still like to point out that I wrote this to a playlist of 50% Nine Inch Nails. So take a deep breath, grab a cup of tea and some kleenex, and hold on to your hats. 
> 
> (If anyone would like to message me to get more details about what to expect, or anything I can do to help them decide whether they can feel okay reading this, I am happy to oblige and can be reached at vorvayne.tumblr.com)

The first thing Yumichika ever becomes really, really good at is sex.

 

It’s not exactly intentional at first. When he first arrives in District 66, a skinny teenager with long hair and a ragged yukata and nothing else but his name, he’s taken in by the woman who owns the first inn he passes. She tells him he has three weeks to find somewhere else. He asks if there’s any food, and she says that they don’t get hungry here, that rich people keep all the food for themselves but no one needs it, really. Still, halfway through the first week he is weak and lightheaded, and if this isn’t hunger, then he doesn’t know what else to call it.

 

At the end of the second week, he’s woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a door locking. He’s learnt enough to be scared, but not enough not to be stupid; he calls out, “Hello?”

 

The only reply is low laughter, and a candle being lit, then he’s thrown to the floor and blindfolded. He never gets to see the faces of the two men who tear off his clothes and hit him in the stomach until he opens his mouth for them. He gags and chokes, trying not to retch, but they don’t seem to care. Later, he screams in pain and struggles, but he’s weak as a kitten compared to them, and they hold him down and beat him until he stops. It doesn’t take long before he’s too exhausted to even move, to do anything except whimper softly and wait for it to be over, face scraping against the filthy wooden floor and overwhelmed by the smell of damp rot and stale breath.

 

It’s a long, long time til they’re done with him. One voice says, “It’d be a shame to ruin such a pretty face,” and by the end it’s the only part of him that doesn’t hurt. He’s in too much pain to do anything, and he hears the voice of the woman, and the sound of coins clinking together, before the door closes again.

 

He leaves the next morning, still in pain and starving. It doesn’t occur to him until later to ask the woman how much they paid for him. He sleeps outside because he has to, and because he can’t, won’t be trapped anywhere. Occasionally he tenses against sudden pain inside, or gags around a phantom feeling in his throat, and it feels entirely real even though he knows otherwise.

 

By the end of the third week - or maybe it’s halfway through the fourth by now, Yumichika isn’t sure - he’s mostly too weak to move. He sits at the mouth of an alleyway which leads on to a main road, tucked away from annoyed passers-by but still bright and public enough to be reasonably safe. He sleeps there, too; it’s not cold at night at the moment, and though some part of him vaguely dreads the change of seasons, he’s not certain how long it will be until he passes out and doesn’t wake up. At least it hasn’t rained much. The streets are dry and dusty and uniformly the colour of soil, and his throat is dry, but a cold would finish him.

 

A finger under his jaw tilts his head up, and he flinches at the contact and opens heavy eyes.

“You’re a pretty thing,” the man towering over him says.

 

 _Oh god_ , Yumichika thinks, but it’s a curiously distant thought, without much emotion connected to it. The man is large and strong and covered in Yakuza tattoos, though he’s unexpectedly young. Yumichika doesn’t fight it when the man picks him up as though he weighs barely anything, doesn’t fight when he holds Yumichika’s hair roughly and shoves his cock down his throat. He’s too tired to fight, and finds that this ragdoll lack of tension minimises the choking. There’s nothing in his stomach, not even much water, so he doesn’t retch this time.

 

Maybe it’s over quickly, or maybe his swimming half-consciousness just makes it seem that way. The man tucks himself away - will there be no bruises this time? - and chucks something onto Yumichika’s lap. “For your trouble, kid,” he says, and walks away.

 

It takes Yumichika a moment to realise that it’s a bread roll. He _devours_ it, and though it hurts hitting his empty stomach, strength seems to return to his body from the centre all the way out to his fingertips. This has the unfortunate side effect that he can now feel all of the bruises that haven’t really healed yet.

 

His whole body is aching from sitting in the same position for so long, so he pushes himself upright and walks down the main street with little idea of where he’s going. The street is grimy and well-trafficked, with stalls down either side and grey, raggedy people trudging mechanically along. A stranger crashes into him and he tenses and panics at the contact, shoving reflexively. The man - older and thick-set and laden with bags - careens away and ends up on almost the other side of the street, shouting obscenities.

 

Yumichika looks down at his small, slim hands and thinks, with great surprise, _I am strong_. But only, it seems, when there’s food, nomatter what the woman said. She was a liar. So he has to get some more if he wants to survive - and he wants. He wants to go back to that inn where they said, _shame to ruin such a pretty face_ , and slice hers to pieces, demand that she give him the money they paid her to use him. He was the one sold; the money belongs to him.

 

Two people in a short time have told him he has a pretty face. He doesn’t know what he looks like, so he wanders until he finds the district’s dubiously clean river they use to wash their clothes. It’s too murky to see clearly, but he can see long dark hair and a thin face with large eyes, and he supposes that perhaps it’s true. He’ll be prettier if he’s clean, so he strips and washes his clothes and hair as best he can in the murky river and - well, it’s something of an improvement. The women working along the bank stare at his naked body as though it’s shameful. Being pretty seems to make him a target, but he’s beginning to wonder if it can’t also be an advantage.

 

He doesn’t know how to go about this, and it’s only a day before the restorative effects of food wear off and the hunger comes back. He can’t let himself become as weak as he did last time; he’d be dead, if not for the man who liked what he saw enough to throw Yumichika a scrap once he took what he wanted.

 

Every time someone touches him in the street he flinches; every time someone looks at him twice he has to fight the urge to run. There is something on the inside that wants to scream and claw at his own skin, but the rest of him is oddly logical; he needs food and somewhere to sleep, and the only thing he has that people want is this. It’s distasteful, but it won’t kill him. He saw a man kicked to death in an alley a few weeks ago round the corner from one of the water vendors; Yumichika would make a similarly easy target in a place like this.

 

He swallows around shuddering nausea and ties his robe tightly at the waist, allowing it to fall open a little at the shoulders, then he makes his way around inns and shops. The last time he tried this, he offered labour in exchange for a place to stay, and was turned away everywhere. This time he tries something different; he isn’t sure how to say it - _you can have me however you like, if you’ll just let me stay_ \- but it turns out that it’s easy to tell who is likely to agree the moment they open the door to his half-smile. Women look at him with disgust and he doesn’t know why, but none of them want him. It’s always the men, and half of them close the door in his face the moment they realise how they’ve been looking at him.

 

In the end, Yumichika knows this man will let him in when he _doesn’t_ close the door; he waits for Yumichika to stammer his way through _I need a place to stay...I’d be very grateful...I would let you do whatever you liked…_ as if he knows what Yumichika was offering all along and just wanted to hear him say it. Yumichika can’t look him in the eyes, but the man waves him in.

 

“That’s real enterprising of you, kid,” he says. When he turns round, gesturing for Yumichika to follow, the beginning of a tattoo is visible at the base of his neck.   
  
_Yakuza_ , Yumichika thinks, swallowing around panic. The run-down inn looked nothing special at all; certainly not the sort of place run by a Yakuza man, and yet - Yumichika has no choice. He follows the man upstairs and into a tiny room - barely a closet - and a blanket is chucked in behind him. “Get some sleep. You’re working tonight.”  
  
Yumichika blinks, trying to get a handle on the situation. “Working?” The man glowers a little more from under thick, black eyebrows.

 

“Yeah - what’d you expect, for me to bother putting you up just so I could fuck you? Your job is to go downstairs and look pretty and entertain my guests, and if you’re lucky you might get a few bits of appreciation from the customers.” The man shuts the door and lopes off without so much as mentioning his name.

 

Entertain the guests, right. Who will all be Yakuza too, most likely. Still, it’s not as if a group of Yakuza are any more likely to beat him bloody than any other group of thugs on the street; perhaps less, if the inkeeper were to make them pay for that sort of thing. And likely he wouldn’t want his employee unsuitable for work the next day. It’s not safety, exactly. But _appreciation from the customers_ \- what would that be? Money? Scraps of food?

 

Better, then, than the inn he’d come from, and better than the streets. There’s a window in this upstairs room, large enough for him to wriggle out of, so if he were locked in he could still escape.

 

He curls up under the blankets and manages to doze for a few hours. When he wakes up it’s dark, and the man - whose name he disconcertingly still does not know - hauls in a bucket of water, a bar of soap, and a green robe that, though plain and obviously too large for Yumichika, looks to be infinitely better than the ragged thing he had been wearing. 

Yumichika washes as best he can with the limited water, but it seems to actually be clean, and the soap is an unexpected luxury. _Look pretty_ , he remembers, letting down his hair and combing it through carefully with his fingers till it hangs in a straight black sheet down his back. The robe is far too large, especially around the shoulders. Yumichika opens the top to expose his collarbones and the top of his shoulder and rolls up the sleeves many times, then folds the fabric around his waist strategically before tying the sash. He hopes the draping looks artful, now.

 

He supposes he’s expected to make himself appealing - “entertain”, the man had said. He wants his customers to be happy, so that means: talk, perhaps flatter, pretend to enjoy any attention he is given. Yumichika can do that. The thought of leaning in to an unwanted touch of his thigh makes him feel ill, but in the relative public of the bar, at least no one will do anything too indiscreet or painful. And if someone wishes to drag him off to some closet and use him, then hopefully they will be too intent on relieving their urges to notice if he lets slip a few pained sounds and just waits for it to be over.

 

Maybe he will learn to feign enthusiasm even for that. _Whore_ , he thinks, trying the word on for size in his mind. _That’s what I am now_.

 

He keeps his chin up when he presents himself downstairs. Business has only just begun, really; the bar is two-thirds empty, but still, men with scarred faces and missing fingertips look at him up and down over their drinks. The inkeeper calls him over with a sharp jerk of his head. “You scrub up well,” he says, and begins filling a wooden mug.   
  
_You knew I would_ , Yumichika thinks, _otherwise you would have closed the door in my face_. “Thank you,” he says, pulling one lock of hair to the front of his shoulders.

 

The man pushes the mug across the stained bartop. “Here,” he says. “You’ll need this.”

 

Alcohol of some kind, by the smell. Will alcohol make this easier? In Yumichika’s observation it seems to make people more inclined to do stupid things; still, it’ll give him something to do with his hands. He accepts with a nod, and takes a sip.

 

It’s utterly vile. Yumichika smoothes out the expression of revulsion and swallows anyway; it’s not going to be difficult to avoid drinking too much. He’s going to have to join a table in a minute and be _entertaining_ , somehow. What do you even say to a group of drinking Yakuza? Enquiring about work is probably not the best conversation starter.

 

He leans over the bar to speak to the inkeeper again. “Who’s been here the longest?”

 

The man’s eyebrows raise, and he examines Yumichika thoughtfully. “That lot over there,” he indicates with a tilt of his head. “They’re on their fourth round.”

 

“Good.” Yumichika takes a sip of his drink and puts on a half-smile, then heads slowly over to a table in the far corner surrounded by men playing cards with their upper bodies exposed to show off their ink. One or two look up as he approaches; every single man is at least twice Yumichika’s size.

 

“Looks like the entertainment budget’s gone up, ne?” The most easily differentiable thing about the men is their tattoos, and this particular man has a huge dragon covering his back and shoulders. Yumichika can’t even imagine how many hours that must have taken. The man next to him elbows him and says, “Oi, Roku, it’s your turn.”

 

“Does that mean I can sit?” Yumichika says, indicating the spare zafu with his drink and taking another sip. He’s beginning to feel...warm, which is an improvement on the constant chill he feels, except for the few short hours after he eats something.

 

A man with ratty blond hair in a short ponytail grins at him. “That’s onii-san’s place, but you can sit here.” He slaps one massive thigh.

 

Yumichika perches on it, crosses his legs, and begins to idly play with his hair. He leans close to the man’s ear and says, “Who’s winning?”

 

He points with one thumb, and Yumichika notices that the tip of his pinky finger is gone, the scar at the top gruesome rather than clean-cut. “Mugara, there. Though his luck’ll probably turn soon; he ain’t all that good at oicho-kabu.”

 

“Mm. And what’s your name?” Yumichika allows his hair to trail over the man’s shoulder

 

“Isuke,” the man says, and he wraps an arm possessively around Yumichika’s waist. It looks as if he might be able to put his _hands_ all the way around Yumichika’s waist, if he tried. Yumichika takes a few swallows of his drink; it’s not improving in flavour as he gets further down, but it is becoming easier to bear. The arm trapping him where he is is less easy to bear; the urge to fight his way free is strong, but he stamps on it firmly with more sips of beer and the knowledge that he’ll be kicked out if he tries that.

 

It’s not so very bad, really. There’s no pain, and he isn’t cold for once, and in between rounds Isuke tells him the rules of oicho-kabu. There’s the constant uncomfortable feeling of being stared at with intent, especially Mugara and a man with an intricate koi fish pattern down either side of his chest, but when the next round is due Isuke indicates another drink for Yumichika, encouraging him to finish the one he has.

 

 _I’d rather not_ is clearly not an option, so he smiles briefly and puts away the drink in one long go, taking care not to spill unattractively and keeping his face impassive. The warmth pooling in his stomach is spreading outwards, and his senses seem to be blurring slightly. He can still feel the arm holding him in place, but it seems less connected to the urge to flee.

 

“Oi, Isuke, you’re monopolising the pretty thing,” Roku says, and he leans over and grabs Yumichika’s thigh. Yumichika can’t help but tense, and his stomach lurches unpleasantly. He wants to shrink away, to avoid looking at the leer Roku is giving him, but he doesn’t have a choice, and in a minute his behaviour will register as strange.

 

He makes himself shift round to look at Roku. “Well, you could deal me in. Then I can play with _all_ of you,” he says. This draws a round of guffaws, and he manages to slip off Isuke’s lap and onto a zafu between him and Roku. The next round arrives at the table, and Yumichika accepts his with the best smile he can muster and a _thank you_ , and tries not to make it obvious that he drinks the first third all in one go. The distant, floating feeling makes him more daring, makes up for the vile taste in his mouth and he’s not sure if it’s the swill he’s drinking or disgust.

 

He hates how easy it is, to say the right things, to pretend to be useless at the game even once he has the hang of it because they laugh and call him cute and put their hands wherever they please. It’s not hard to entertain a bunch of drunken men when you’re drunk yourself - and Yumichika is definitely drunk.

 

He’s so drunk that it’s not so bad when they carry him off to a back room and strip off his clothes. Everything is blurry and far away, even the part of him that wants to scream, and with countless hands all over him it takes a while to realise that the strange noises, identifiably neither pain nor fear nor pleasure but something a little like all three, are coming from him. They share him equitably, passing him round until he’s dizzy and disoriented. Someone strokes his hair as he tries not to choke on their cock. They’re rough with him but not to the point of injury - well, probably; he’s feeling no pain at all.

 

He’s mostly together and mostly okay until someone wraps a hand around his cock and says into his ear, _give us a show, little slut_ , and his body does exactly what it is designed to do.  

 

They leave him in an exhausted, sticky heap, though someone bothers to drape the green robe over him. When he’s sure he’s alone the shaking starts, a counterpoint to the slow spin of the room around him.

 

At length, he falls asleep.

 

-

 

Yumichika opens gluey eyelids the next morning, feeling sick. Someone has moved him upstairs to the little spare room with a blanket. He’s...disgusting; so disgusting he would sell his soul for a bath. Alcohol-fogged memories from the previous evening trickle into his consciousness, and he curls up and swallows, arms wrapped around his stomach, until he can stop gagging on nothing.

 

The door opens with no preamble, and he jumps at the unexpected noise and movement. Stupidly, his heart races even as he can see it’s only Suzuruma. The inkeeper has brought him another bucket of water and his old robe, cleaner than when he last saw it.

 

“Thank you,” Yumichika says, though he can’t meet the man’s eyes in his current state.

 

The inkeeper grunts in acknowledgement, then pauses. “You did all right, kid.” Yumichika swallows; to this he cannot reply _thank you_. “Isuke left you something,” he says, and drops a small silver coin on the floor before leaving.

 

Yumichika picks the coin up; it’s tarnished and battered, with an image of the Seireitei stamped on it. He doesn’t know how much it’s worth, but he remembers the small bronze-coloured pieces exchanged for beers the previous evening and thinks, _enough_.

 

The first thing Yumichika does when he arrives at the market is wander around and watch carefully how much people pay for things. It seems he was roughly right; small bronze bits for drinks, small silvers for more expensive items like clothing and food. There isn’t much of what Yumichika would consider actual sustenance, mostly curiosities like sweets and pastries. At some point, when he finds someone safe, Yumichika will ask why he gets hungry when no one else seems to. Larger silver coins like the one he has in his fist draw several smaller silvers as change, normally.   
  
He can afford food and something else to wear, he thinks. He should make food his priority - and quantity over quality, if he can possibly find someone selling something more sensible than tiny pastries - but a colourful, well-fitting Yukata will make him appear more attractive, probably. He’s not sure that it matters; not sure what men see in him, really, especially since one of the Yakuza from last night held his hair and said, _so pretty, almost like a woman_. He takes a deep breath, and wonders why, then, they don’t just pay for a woman.

 

One market stall has a woman selling bronze mirrors, and he looks at the clearest reflection of himself he has ever seen. He does look like a woman to a casual glance, but it’s not quite right - there’s a sharpness to jaw and cheekbones and something around the eyes that differentiates him. Yumichika wonders momentarily what he would look like in a woman’s eye makeup, since his eyes are already so large compared to the rest of his face.

 

Yumichika bypasses a number of stalls displaying beautiful yukata until he finds a stall selling bread. Presenting the large silver coin gains him only two small silvers back, but there’s more, he reassures himself, where that came from. It’s been two days since he ate, and it’s a struggle not to tear into the bread roll, but he feels almost as if it will be taken away if he reveals that he’s eating because he is hungry.

 

He stashes the remaining half of the roll in his pocket and shops for a yukata, and though at first he considers which fabrics seem to drape most attractively along the lines of his body and which colours look best against the black of his hair, in the end he selects one with a peacock feather pattern simply because it is beautiful.

 

-

 

Yumichika learns about masturbation from putting together various rude jokes that are made in his presence. The men in Suzuruma’s bar seem convinced that they’re supposed to make sexual jokes to him for some reason, as though in some way they still have to persuade him to do his job. He wonders if they treat the people - women? Other men? - they attempt to woo without money the same way.

 

It had never occurred to him that men with enough money to buy him would ever bother to do it themselves. He doesn’t really know how expensive he is, if there’s a group discount or if you just pay for the time and it’s cheaper to share. He should ask Suzuruma. But it seems that everyone masturbates, and he wonders if it’s odd that the idea had never held much appeal. His body seems to have learned to take care of itself most evenings, whether or not the guests bother trying to get an orgasm out of him, and he has no desire at all to relive it in private moments. The guests like it, anyway. Yumichika supposes it must looks like he wants them.

 

He has become very good at swallowing around his gag reflex, at leaning into a touch from callused hands, at opening his legs and tipping back his head and making pleasure sounds. Some of the responses have become reflexive instead of conscious: he doesn’t have to fake moans, anymore, when someone slides fingers into his mouth for him to suck. Men call him _pretty little whore_ and _filthy slut_ as they run their hands all over him, and he can’t help but think it’s a little true, that it’s why he’s so good at this job that he can make a man come in minutes with both hands tied behind his back. It’s difficult for even him to tell sometimes, drunk and begging to come, where the performance begins.

 

There are the bad days, of course - where Suzuruma gets him to run errands and he smells damp rot, or hears the sound of a door locking as he walks down the street, and he spends the whole day looking over his shoulder and tensing at every unexpected touch. Stupid little things like that set him off, like a mouthful of rice getting stuck in his throat, while the man two nights ago who grabbed so hard he left bloody scrapes and finger-shaped purple bruises on Yumichika’s hips was almost routine.

 

He heals quickly, anyway, when he’s had enough to eat, and the regulars at the bar have got used to the idea that he likes food and often bring him sweets or pastries. Today, the marks are barely visible.

 

He learns a lot from the regulars at the bar; learns how to cheat at cards and what shinigami are and where to get decent food and how to let people know that you belong to the Yakuza, if you need to. How to handle a knife if that doesn’t work. Where the softest parts to hit are and how to form a fist properly if you don’t have a knife.

 

No one at all tells him what to do when a newcomer walks into the bar and sits down, and Yumichika’s first thought is, _I wonder what you taste like?_ He stands up from where he’s seated by one of his tables of regulars and says, “Sorry, boys, better say hello to the fresh meat,” then walks over. It’s a good thing his kimono restricts his strides, keeps him from walking too fast and slinging his legs around the man’s hips and finding out why he draws the eye so much more than anyone else here.

 

The first thing the man does is take out a large box of noodles and eat them in a way Yumichika has never seen anyone eat food before: swiftly, efficiently, as if he _needs_ the food so much he doesn’t even care how it tastes. It could be disgusting, but it isn’t; he eats neatly despite the speed, and the fingers gripping his chopsticks are long and slim and callused in a few places, rather than generally rough, as if he does the same thing over and over. Yumichika takes a moment to wonder what a man so unscarred and absent tattoos is doing in Suzuruma’s bar.

 

“You’re staring at my food,” the man observes between bites, and his accent is rougher even than you commonly get in the 65th; this man comes from the 70s somewhere. Yumichika’s heard all sorts of stories about the 70s. The urge to ask endless stupid questions ties his tongue.

 

Yumichika looks away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.” He can feel himself blushing, of all things, and though it’s his job to be funny and make conversation he can’t think of one single thing to say.

 

“It’s just noodles. Nothing tasty,” he says, scratching his bald head. There’s strange marks at the corners of his eyes; birthmarks, or paint of some kind? Yumichika wonders what they would feel like to touch.

 

He gathers up his courage. “I get hungry, too,” he says, because though he has no reason to trust this man, at least the fact that they have this in common makes him safer to ask than anyone else. Maybe he’s not thinking too clearly about this, but he’s not sure he cares. He wants this man to know they have something in common, even though everyone says Yumichika is slim and pretty and delicate, and the man looks as though he’s never lost a fight in his life. “Everyone says I shouldn’t, but...if I don’t have food, I start to faint.”

 

The man stares at him with undisguised incredulity. “You should keep that to yourself.”

 

Yumichika bristles. “I have,” he says. “You’re the first person I’ve told. And it’s not as if _you’re_ being subtle about it,” he notes.

 

“Means you’ve got reiryoku,” the man says, after a few minutes of looking at him. “Like those cunts up in the Seireitei.”

 

Yumichika leans forward. He can’t help it; it’s as if the man is humming or something, because Yumichika can almost feel him in a way he can’t feel anyone else. “Reiryoku?”

 

“Energy stuff,” he explains. “Some people can do some cool shit with it - balls of energy and stuff - but mostly I’m just stronger and harder to cut.” Which explains the lack of scars; Yumichika had been wondering how _from the 70th, at least_ squares with _unscarred_.

 

At least now he has an explanation for the strength that seems to belie his own size. Yumichika takes out a small box of sweets that were a gift from last night; he’s been saving them. He takes one and eats it, then offers the box to the bald man.

 

“Eh? I don’t wanna take your food, if you need it,” he says, but he’s looking at the offered food in the same way that men normally look at Yumichika’s body.   
  
“It’s all right,” Yumichika says. “I can get more. You can have some.” _You can have anything you want; you can have me_. “If you’ll tell me your name.”  
  
The man raises an eyebrow, but takes a sweet. “Ikkaku,” he says, then pops it into his mouth, and his expression dissolves into one of ecstasy. It’s an expression Yumichika could stand to see again, maybe leaning over him; he’d even keep his eyes open for that, he thinks. “Where’d you get these?”

“My name is Yumichika,” he says, though Ikkaku didn’t ask; Yumichika just wants him to know. “And people get me things, sometimes.”

 

Ikkaku seems to look over Yumichika’s body for the first time since he sat down. “You work here, don’t you.”

 

“Yes,” Yumichika says.

 

Ikkaku sighs, and picks up his bowl of sake. “Look, I ain’t gonna fuck you. I’m not that sort of guy.”

 

Yumichika blinks, confused. Not _what_ sort of guy?  Not the sort that wants him?

 

Then something like shame creeps in, and he has to drop his gaze to keep his expression even. Why does Ikkaku not like him? Is he not beautiful enough for someone like Ikkaku, so obviously stronger and more interesting than the men he’s used to?  
  
Is he supposed to feel ashamed of being a whore?

 

Yumichika presses his lips together. “Do you generally only talk to people if you want to fuck them?” People generally only talk to Yumichika if they want to fuck him, but he’s aware that’s not always the case, that there are a few other motivations for conversation.

 

Ikkaku shrugs. “Don’t talk to people much, really.” He turns back to his noodles, and Yumichika bites his lip, stung.

 

It’s horribly rude, but he stands abruptly. If that wasn’t a dismissal, then he doesn’t know what it was. “Well. I’ll leave you in peace, then.” He walks back over to his table of regulars, feeling Ikkaku’s eyes on him but deciding he doesn’t care. It’s more effort than usual to smile, to permit touch, when his hands want to ball into fists so his nails dig in.

 

It gets bad enough that he has to excuse himself and go outside to get some air, reassure himself that the bar is not that small, that he’s not trapped, that at any moment he could shrug off the hands on his hips and bodies crowding him in place if he wanted to: he _chooses_ not to, for food and water and a roof over his head.

 

He thinks about Ikkaku, who had looked at his face and kept his hands to himself (and is he supposed to be pleased about that? Yumichika would have leant into his touch willingly), and in that instant that he’s not paying attention, he’s grabbed and shoved up against a wall. The man is tall with awful breath and Yumichika gathers his wits and is about to knee him in the groin when a fist intersects with his temple. He’s out cold before he hits the ground.

 

Yumichika turns round and Ikkaku’s standing there, grinning. “Not that I don’t appreciate you defending my honour and all,” he says, feeling somewhat vindicated as sarcasm falls out of his mouth, “But I could’ve handled that myself.”

 

The grin falls away a little. “Didn’t look like it from where I’m standing.”

 

Yumichika looks him right in the eye and lifts one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “So try me.”

 

Ikkaku looks at him like he’s lost his mind. “...You’re serious.”

 

Yumichika just waits. Ikkaku waits long enough to move that Yumichika had almost stopped expecting him to - clever - before his hand thrusts forward to grab Yumichika’s throat. Yumichika has a single instant of total stillness where he thinks only _yes_ , and then he drops abruptly to one knee and slams his knuckles into Ikkaku’s solar plexus. Ikkaku falls forward, and Yumichika grabs his hips, plants one foot in his groin and rolls backwards, throwing Ikkaku over.   
  
Yumichika returns seamlessly to kneeling and leans one shin across Ikkaku’s throat. Ikkaku stares at him blankly, and Yumichika couldn’t wipe the satisfied smile off his face if he tried, panting with adrenaline rather than exertion. An answering grin spreads its way across Ikkaku’s face, and Yumichika lets him up.

 

“I guess I don’t have to worry about you, then,” he says, as though he would have, otherwise. Then he turns and walks off, and Yumichika needs to go back inside because he’s supposed to be working, and though he’s familiar with not being able to shake the memory of a touch, the feeling that Ikkaku’s hand around his throat drew out of him is entirely new.

 

Much later, he wakes up to a rising sun after a dream that he can’t quite remember with his hand round his cock. Ikkaku was in the dream, all flashing grin and grasping fingers and the strength that Yumichika felt so strongly even through that brief moment of contact, and he finds himself thrusting up into his hand at the memory.

 

Yumichika wonders what it would be like with someone whose smile is crooked and infections. With someone so strong, almost humming with coiled strength, and was that the _reiryoku_ that Ikkaku spoke of? Would Ikkaku run fingers through his hair, wrap those long, large hands around his hips, pin him to the wall by his throat and fuck his mouth? All these things that have been done to him and he will never know what _Ikkaku_ does, what _Ikkaku_ tastes like. He finds himself hungry to know those things.  
  
A hundred imagined images of Ikkaku on top of him and around him devolve into a thousand clearly remembered images of other people doing the same things; there is nothing that he can imagine being done to him that has not already been done. There is little difference, he knows, between one man fucking you and another, and he doesn’t understand why it’s different to imagine Ikkaku’s cock in his mouth than anyone else’s.  Hunger and nausea coil together unpleasantly in his stomach, like the memory of hundreds of orgasms forced out of his body.

 

It’s no good at all trying to focus, and in the end he curls up into a ball and swallows around the urge to be sick, waiting for sleep to take him out of the loop of memories that make him shudder.And if, in the morning, there’s a damp patch on the blanket under his head, then that’s no one’s business but his own.

 

He washes his face more carefully than usual that morning, and his eyes feel a little sore but he can’t tell if they’re red or not. It’s suddenly so, so frustrating, and maybe it’s not all about not being able to see his own face but he snatches up his money pouch and marches out the door.

 

It's a stupid thing to spend his hard-earned money on, but really, what else is he going to do with it? The mirror is the size of a small table, silver and shiny and depicts him faithfully, black hair and purplish eyes and protuberant collarbones and bony wrists. This is what pretty is? He looks - underfed and weak, compared to Ikkaku, and maybe that's why Ikkaku didn't want him. Yumichika could feel how tough Ikkaku is; maybe he'd want someone who doesn't break.

 

Maybe the patrons of Suzuruma's bar like how breakable he looks.

 

He carries the mirror home and props it up against the wall. His eyes are not red, if they ever were. He looks at himself, missing the fat of childhood but still with eyes too big for his face, eats a slice of cake, and remembers what Ikkaku said about being stronger and harder to cut.

 

 _I am not fragile,_ he thinks, and gets ready for the evening's work.

 

-

 

Some days, honestly, his job is just _dull_. An evening full of regulars, and he knows what they want of him so well he falls into an unconscious rhythm. Or there’s no pain at all anywhere to distract him, intentional or otherwise, not even the friction of grabbing hands or inadequate lubricant or his hair catching between bodies.

 

He allows his mind to wander...and, as usual these days, it wanders to Ikkaku. Yumichika hasn’t seen him since; not surprising, really, given that he’s not from around here. He wonders what Ikkaku is doing now, if it’s in any way similar to what Yumichika’s doing. If Ikkaku has one person to have sex with or sleeps around or just doesn’t bother much, and whether he prefers men or women or both.

 

He imagines, almost idly, what it would be like if Ikkaku were the one currently kneeling over him, hands on his hips. And that’s...different. It’s imperfect; perhaps it’ll be better if he closes his eyes and -

 

His orgasm is followed by an overpowering wave of nausea and shame, and it hasn’t taken away much of the grasping hunger for - he doesn’t know what. Isn’t this what the body craves: release? It would almost have been better if there had been pain and tears because after those times he feels empty, spent in a way he can’t seem to achieve any other way.

 

Later, Yumichika lies awake in bed and tells himself firmly, _I will stop thinking of Ikkaku_. He doesn’t really expect it to work.

 

There are a few others of course, eventually. Yumichika does not learn their names, and they do want to fuck him, and they are not memorable, with one exception: a man with white-blonde hair who threw him around roughly and left fingernail scrapes all down his back, and Yumichika came screaming for the first time in his entire life. The man whispered a name into Yumichika’s ear at his own orgasm, but Yumichika doesn’t remember it. He was languid and sated for _days_ afterwards, and though he couldn’t look anyone in the eye for the rest of the evening, it was worth it to know how it feels like to be fucked like a lover.

 

He still isn’t sure what need was filled, what thing it is that his body craves, sometimes overwhelming his mind’s revulsion and shame and sometimes running in parallel. It’s becoming more difficult, slowly, not to shirk away from casual touch, but he falls easily into conditioned response when someone holds him down and tears into him.

 

Yumichika begins to wish that Ikkaku had never walked into Suzuruma’s bar, and that he had not wondered what Ikkaku tasted like. He can trace the beginning of this strange sickness to that day, and perhaps he was lost the moment he imagined what it would be like to touch Ikkaku, and perhaps it took as long as that instant of hand against throat. Either way, it seems hopeless to attempt to hold the feeling inside. So he lets it out, lets it take over, and then sometimes it doesn’t even feel like him who kneels and begs and says _Please may I come?_ He’s not even sure where that one started; a sense of politeness at first, to give warning and ask permission all in one, and now he almost needs the growled _yes_ in his ear.

 

He looks in his mirror one morning, and realises he doesn’t look like a child anymore.

 

There’s a different atmosphere when Yumichika arrives downstairs that evening. It doesn’t take him very long to ascertain the source: in one corner, there’s an unfamiliar man with dark brown hair in a braid and well-fitting clothes who doesn’t look anything like Yakuza. He doesn’t even look threatening; he’s slim and middle-aged and has a forgettable face. It’s clear he’s important, though. Murmurs of _o-nii-sama_ and _Gaaran-dono_ follow him around.

 

So Yumichika is wary as he approaches this man; he slips into seiza at a respectful distance and keeps his eyes lowered, mostly. He becomes warier on noting the way Gaaran looks at him: predatory, but like a snake rather than the mammalian lust Yumichika is used to. His eyes are the palest blue and completely empty.   
  
Gaaran looks him up and down once, slowly, avoiding his face until the very last moment. “So you’re this place’s resident whore,” he says.   
  
People don’t normally say so out loud, at least not in the public venue of the bar. Yumichika makes himself look Gaaran in the eye. “Yes.”

 

“Come here,” Gaaran says softly, as if he’s so used to being obeyed that he doesn’t need a commanding voice anymore. Yumichika does as he’s told, and the humming feeling on the edge of perception becomes more obvious. It’s not much like the energy surrounding Ikkaku - he should not think his name in Gaaran’s presence in case it is stained - but more like the shivering of ice just before it cracks. Yumichika takes deep, controlled breaths. Everyone nearby seems to be watching silently. What are they waiting for?

 

Gaaran slaps him once, hard, and Yumichika can’t restrain a small, surprised gasp of pain. After a moment, he turns his head back towards Gaaran, eyes down this time because he doesn’t want to see his expression. “Obedient little thing, aren’t you? Pretty, too. Maybe I should cut up your face, see what you do when being pretty doesn’t work for you anymore. See who would want you then.” Something cold and metal rests against the side of his neck, and Yumichika feels every muscle clench with the effort of not moving. The tiny knife lifts to trail just underneath Yumichika’s left eye, stroking softly, and though Yumichika doesn’t know for certain if it’s sharp, Gaaran doesn’t seem like the sort of man to carry a dull knife. “ _I_ would still want you, you know. I don’t have much use for a pretty face...and I’d bet that you make _lovely_ sounds when you’re in pain, hmm?”

 

It takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to shudder and flinch away. The knife descends slowly, and he begins to be able to breathe properly again, though his breathing is too quick, and - he needs to go outside, get some air -

 

The slap, this time, is so hard that Yumichika is knocked to the floor, and his pained cry is out of him before he can clamp down on it so as not to give Gaaran the satisfaction. “I thought so,” Gaaran says, and rotates his wrist till it gives a sickening crunch. He stands, and nudges Yumichika in the ribs with his foot. “Go flirt with the boys, now. I’ll be back for you later.”

 

Yumichika does not unclench until the sound of Gaaran’s footsteps fades to nothing. Then he pushes himself gently up into seiza, works his jaw discreetly to assess the damage, and stands. He hurts, but there’s nothing broken.

 

Everyone stares at him as he walks as fast as he can in his kimono to the door. He tries not to pay attention, just look straight ahead, but he can feel all the eyes in the room on him and when he closes the front door behind him he has to lean against it to remain upright as the edges of his vision go grey and his heartbeat pounds in his ears, far too fast. He’s shaking, but he has to compose himself and go back inside. He undoes the knot of his hair and pulls it all to the front of his right shoulder where it will disguise the right side of his face a little, because there must be a red mark. Yumichika hopes there isn’t a bruise, hopes that he won’t have to smile and flirt and please with a black and blue face.

 

He digs his nails into his palm over the small scars there, and makes himself stand, turn around, and walk back inside. There’s a table of familiar faces in the corner, and he goes to sit by them and play cards, and compared to Gaaran they’re almost comforting. No one makes any real advances, and Yumichika isn’t sure if it’s pity, or because Gaaran has so clearly staked his claim.

 

When the next round is fetched, Isuke shoves a large bowl of sake in front of Yumichika. “Drink,” he says. “You’ll need it.”

 

Yumichika takes a long sip and, it’s true, he could use something stronger than the cheap beer Suzuruma sends his way, writing it off as a necessary expense. He raises one eyebrow, trying for flippant and failing, suddenly. “I’ll need it?”

 

“Just...trust us, ne? We know Gaaran-dono,” Isuke says, and Yumichika finds it hard to swallow suddenly. He’d managed to forget, for a few moments, that he’s going to have to touch Gaaran later, and from the sounds of things he will not be forgiving.

 

“Thank you,” Yumichika says, and when he drains the bowl and requests another, Isuke wordlessly refills it.

 

He manages to get in three bowls, and a much-needed level of calm dissociation, before a hulking man with tattoos all the way up his thick neck grabs Yumichika’s elbow and says, “This way.” It’s redundant, because Yumichika can either follow the man or be dragged, and he’s been humiliated enough tonight.

 

Yumichika is confused when the man leads him to a different door than usual, begins to feel sick as he’s pulled down dark stairs to the cellar, and is struggling hopelessly when the man shoves him into the cellar and slams the door firmly behind him.

 

There’s the sound of a lock clicking into place, and Yumichika opens his mouth to scream.

 

A cold hand around his mouth and nose muffles any sound. “There’s no point,” Gaaran says. “Nothing will change if you scream. In fact, I’m rather hoping you do - but not just yet.”

 

Yumichika’s eyes are adjusting to the blackness, and the cellar has been cleared; all there is in here is a table at hip height and a bag in the corner. He’s trapped in dark room with Gaaran. Every sense is overwhelming; he can hear Gaaran’s quiet breaths and his own thundering heartbeat, taste the metallic tang of panic in his throat, and his body feels boneless and shaky. There’s no point in trying to keep calm. Someone has cleared out the cellar; someone has decided that whatever Gaaran wants he will get, and the only thing Yumichika can do is hope he’s in one piece when it’s over.

 

One of Gaaran’s nails digs into his neck at the pulse point. “Undress.”

  
It takes twice as long as it should. His fingers will not cooperate, and Gaaran tuts in his ear. “And here I thought, after working here for all these years, you’d be _tough_.”  
  
 _I thought so, too_ , Yumichika thinks, as Gaaran leads him by his hair over to the table and pushes him onto it. Gaaran begins to tie him to the table, and it takes all of Yumichika’s strength not to give in to the part of him that is screaming and fight him off and run, because the door is locked and there’s nowhere to run. Suzuruma would not allow anyone to harm him too much, surely: he wouldn’tt be so valuable scarred and broken.

 

Terror makes his face damp even before the first stinging touch of the whip, and there’s no point at all in trying not to make a sound. Perhaps if he just gives in, this will be over quickly.

 

He’s wrong, of course. There’s no rhythm, no pattern, and just enough pauses that he can’t seem to acclimatise. Every time he begins to space out into a haze of pain Gaaran lets the leather trail gently across his back, drawing attention to the wounds he’s made, and he’s back to the start, scratching the table leg with his nails for something to hang onto. He’s sober enough to be ashamed when his sounds of pain turn into shouts, turn into a few minutes where he can’t stop talking, can’t stop pleading for it to stop. He’s not even talking to Gaaran anymore, not even sure the man is still there because he makes so little noise, and it’s so dark, and his drunkenness is making everything feel unreal.

 

Eventually he stops being able to string words together.

 

By the time Gaaran is finished with him, he’s screaming and struggling uselessly against his bindings. Gaaran has not touched him once except to tie and untie the ropes, and he leaves Yumichika on the desk in total darkness as he unlocks the door and slips out.

 

Yumichika’s limbs are cramped and sore, and he feels something dripping down his skin that might be sweat and might be blood. He tries to stand, but his legs won’t cooperate. The need to get out of the cellar is powerful, but he can only manage to crawl to the door. His shaking turns into sobs that wrack his whole body, and it’s all he can do to catch his breath between them. His arms wrap tightly around his knees and he begins to rock slightly, and at length he quietens and relaxes, exhausted and spent and in more pain than he can remember ever being.

 

He still scrambles away from the door, panicked again, at the sound of footsteps, but when the door opens it’s only Suzuruma with a candle and a blanket. Suzuruma approaches, as if to try and get him up, but Yumichika flinches and manages to speak. “D-don’t...t-t-t-touch me,” he says, jaw clenching. “P-please...don’t…”  
  
Suzuruma holds the candle over Yumichika and peers closer. He sighs. “Ah, hell. If he’s scarred you I’ll make him pay extra.”

 

A slightly hysterical laugh sounds, and Yumichika realises it came from him. He accepts the proffered blanket from Suzuruma and wraps it around himself, noting properly how cold he is. His broken skin hurts where the blanket touches it, but the desire to cover his body is stronger than the pain.   
  
“Can you stand?” Suzuruma looks impatient. The correct answer is clearly _yes_.

 

“I...I don’t think so,” Yumichika rasps, and he’s thirsty, horribly thirsty. Upstairs, there is food and water. Perhaps he can crawl. He takes a deep breath, clutches the blanket tightly in one hand, and tries to move, limbs as solid as rubber.

 

Suzuruma sighs heavily. “I’m gonna have to carry you, I suppose. Pull yourself together.” Then he bends down and picks Yumichika up as if he’s no heavier than a sack of potatoes, walks upstairs, and dumps him unceremoniously on the ratty futon.   
  
Once he’s alone, Yumichika pulls himself to the other corner and lifts a floorboard. Underneath, there’s a covered jug of water and a paper bag of sweets. Eating is the last thing he wants to do, but he manages despite the continuing shivers, knowing that he won’t heal otherwise. He dozes fitfully for the rest of the night, tiredness carrying him to sleep and panic waking him shortly afterwards at every little noise, over and over again. He doesn’t dream about Gaaran, not tonight, but when dawn arrives and he’s barely managed any sleep, he knows that he will.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, most of the wounds have closed up, but walking is still painful. Yumichika’s first thought is to walk to the market and see if he can afford any of the silk kimono that his favourite stall sells, but he’s halfway through prying up the concealing floorboard before he reconsiders. Some shopping and a new kimono might cheer him up, but - he has quite a lot of money. He doesn’t know how much rent is in this district, but it’s an amount of money that could keep him fed for a long time, should he ever need it to.   
  
He knows, these days, how to flirt with a man, how to tastefully imply that he’ll spread his legs for money. He could do the same things somewhere else. True, it wouldn’t necessarily make him any better off - he’d just have to pay his rent instead of never seeing it in the first place - but. He’d be allowed to avoid people like Gaaran.

 

Who probably won’t be coming back, of course. He’s clearly one of the Yakuza high-ups, only swooping in to check that business is going as it should before heading back to the family home. Likely, Yumichika will never see him again.

 

He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.

 

Still. There might be other people nearly as bad, and he never, ever wants to be locked in a room again. He won’t, can’t do it.

 

Suzuruma tells him to strip so he can see the cuts, then sighs and gives him the day off. Yumichika expects him to be angry but he’s only resigned, letting him off with a vague, “You’re not that appealing, all covered in marks.”

 

Yumichika goes to the market anyway. Though there’s a lot of people, the street is wide and he can see the sky, and it’s not so bad. Irrationally, he keeps expecting to meet Gaaran by accident, and he can’t help but keep his head down and body curved inward, as if making himself smaller will prevent him being found. He passes by the kimono without looking, and heads towards a stall full of small leather bags. Though it’s more expensive to purchase a beautiful one, it will be less out of character to do so - and he can’t deny he likes his things to be beautiful. Beautiful things are more valuable, after all.

 

In the food area, a noodle bar has opened. Being seen eating has become fashionable recently; more of a display of wealth than expensive clothes. Even though almost everyone here is poor, they still want a little taste of riches, it seems. It’s good for Yumichika, who feels less afraid to eat his box of noodles in public, slow and careful. He’s hungry this morning, and the noodles are good; inexplicably, they cheer him up. Yumichika buys some sweets, too - the hard boiled kind that will last a long time - and puts them in the small bag.

 

Suzuruma has him serving drinks and talking to people all evening, even if he isn’t expected to fuck them, so he spend the whole time offering them sweets from his new bag and making jokes about how technically it’s his day off, but he came down to see everyone because he likes them, and didn’t want them to get bored without his lovely face to look at. He doesn’t think, not even once, about Gaaran’s threat to slice up his face. If he were made ugly, it would mean a slow death. So he doesn’t think about that: he eats sweets and drinks beer and does the easy half of his job. It’s all right.   
  
It’s all right when he goes back to work properly, too. He seems to need more food when he’s injured, which was a worthwhile thing to work out. No one asks him about the still-healing marks on his body. Do they all know what happened? Or do they not care enough to wonder?   
  
It doesn’t matter, really. He doesn’t want to talk about them. They aren’t scarring, and it’s blessing enough.

 

It’s blessing enough until three weeks later when Gaaran walks into the bar again with his two large bodyguards, and Yumichika’s blood turns instantly to ice.

 

The rounds sent to the table he is at suddenly start arriving with bowls of sake for Yumichika. He sits and loses at cards, and not on purpose, fists clenching and unclenching rhythmically as he tries to decide what to do. He tries leaving the sake to keep a clear head, but it begins to accumulate in front of him, and in any case panic is stalling his mind quite effectively. He turns to drinking it quickly; perhaps unconsciousness would be a mercy in this case. He’s certain he was only able to let himself be tied down without struggling so much Gaaran decided to just gut him only because he didn’t know how bad it would be.

 

Slowly, like sliding into quicksand, he gets drunk. And then he’s only going out for a breath of air, honestly, he probably can’t run in this state - but Gaaran’s bodyguards wrap hands across his face and grasp his arms and drag him bodily into the back room anyway, and because they’re grasping he struggles, and because he struggles they hold tighter.

 

Suzuruma is in the back room. One of the bodyguards holds Yumichika down on the floor in an arm lock, and the moment the other removes his huge hand from across Yumichika’s nose and mouth, Yumichika begins to hyperventilate. He’s not even in the cellar and already he’s falling to bits, tears beginning to fall down his face, and he looks right at Suzuruma. “I can’t. I can’t go down to that cellar again, please don’t make me, please,” he says, though it comes out all slurred and he’s not sure if Suzuruma understands - if he can just make him understand -

  
“I had brought you some sake, but it looks like you don’t need any more,” Suzuruma says, cutting across Yumichika’s litany of pleading. Now he’s started talking he can’t seem to stop: _please, please don’t make me do it again, I can’t do it, it hurt so much and I thought he was going to kill me, I’ll do anything else, please, please._ Suzuruma nods, and the bodyguard clamps Yumichika’s mouth shut again. “Listen. You’ve got to do this. He won’t hurt you too much; he knows as well as I do that’s bad for business.” Yumichika can barely see Suzuruma now, the room is swimming so blearily. There’s the sound of choked-off moans, and he supposes they must be his, supposes he’s too drunk to even control his body anymore.  “He’s the _oyabun_ \- it’s not like I can just say no to him, you know? He’s only in town for a few months. It’ll be okay.”

 

Yumichika swallows, and the guard releases his mouth once more. “A - a few months? I - I have to do this for a few m-months?”

 

Suzuruma sighs. “Yeah. But, look, it’ll be okay. I’ve asked him not to scar you.”

 

Underneath the shaking and crying, there is still something like thought. _I won’t last that long,_ he thinks. _Gaaran wants to beat me to death, and if he’s the oyabun then there’s nothing you can do to stop him._ He feels his body relax a little; there isn’t any point. “No,” he croaks, and his throat won’t make sounds properly. “Please, no.” It’s hopeless, though; he can see that it’s hopeless even though he can’t really see at all.

 

Suzuruma pinches the bridge of his nose, and waves vaguely at the two bodyguards. “Take him to the cellar,” he says. “Gaaran-dono’s waiting.” Meaty hands tighten around his arms, and for an instant the terror is so overwhelming that he falls forward and retches, expelling all the sake in his stomach. Suzuruma makes a disgusted sound. “And for fuck’s sake, clean him up.”

 

There’s nothing he can do when they hold his hair back from his face and dunk his head in a bucket of cold water, or when they rip off his kimono and use it to dry him, or when they half-drag, half-carry him down to the cellar and leave him there. The door locks. There’s the sound of a match striking, and then a candle is lit, and he can see Gaaran.

 

“Look a the state of you,” Gaaran says, and his face is disappointed, but his eyes are... _hungry_.  “It seems as if I’m going to have to get my hands dirty this time.”

 

He doesn’t, though; the hands that snake through Yumichika’s hair and use it to pull him to the centre of the room are gloved. They tie Yumichika’s hands behind his back, so that he’s resting on his knees and shoulders, head pressed against the ground. It doesn’t take long at all for the crying to start again, and he screams his voice hoarse quickly, retreating to exhausted whimpers. Every time he thinks he will go out of his mind with the pain, it turns out he’s wrong, and there’s nothing he can do except wish he were less strong.

 

_Do not wish that._

 

His mind is fragmenting; there’s the part that’s too tired to scream, then the hungry animal part that’s half-starving for the pain even as it screams, _too much, too much,_ and then - this. Emptiness, and a single voice that doesn’t even sound like his own.   
  


_He is only stronger than you because you have not taken it from him._

 

Hands on his hips. And then - he had thought Gaaran too cold for this invasion. It might be less bad than the pain because at least this he is used to; it might be worse because it’s as if Gaaran is crawling all over him even though they’re barely touching, as if Gaaran is creeping into every empty place inside of him and leaving his cold fingerprints there.   
  


_Allow the invasion. Open your hungry heart and eat him alive._

 

Yumichika reaches for the humming feeling that surrounds Gaaran, and _swallows_.

 

Slowly, slowly, his head clears. The pain becomes less, and is almost gone. The hands on his hips falter, and Gaaran’s breathing is laboured.

 

_Now, fly._

 

A touch on his shoulder like feathers, and the smell of perfume, just at the edge of sensation. Yumichika pulls at his hands and feels the rope between them tear. He stands, knocking Gaaran backwards. Gaaran reaches for his left pocket but the movement is slow; Yumichika can follow it, can dart forward and snatch the knife before Gaaran can grasp it properly. He points it at Gaaran’s throat.

 

Gaaran grins. “You’ll never make it out of here, you know. One shout, and - ”

 

And the decision is made: Yumichika lunges forward and slashes at Gaaran’s throat, cutting deeply enough to sever the windpipe. It takes barely an instant; there’s no time at all for Gaaran to make a sound. There’s a moment where he stands there and bleeds, then his body drops to the floor and spews sticky, wet gore everywhere. Disgusting. Yumichika rifles through Gaaran’s pockets til he finds the cellar key, unlocks it, and creeps upstairs. No one is expecting Gaaran to be done with him yet, and from the noise in the bar everyone is occupied being drunk and having arguments.

 

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror before he wipes the blood off as best he can. It’s ruby-red and sparkling against the brightness of a smile so vicious he has never seen it on his own face before, and Yumichika thinks, for the first time, that he looks altogether beautiful.

 

He prises open the floorboard where his money and small stash of emergency sweets are already packed, uses his tattiest yukata to wipe the blood off his face and swiftly dons his second-tattiest. He shoves his fanciest yukata into the bag and leaves the rest of the clothes.

 

The guards are still at the door, but they are no longer threatening, even though he remembers that they overpowered him like a child only hours ago. He’s not sure how strong he is, but never has to find out because he is so much faster. Their bones crunch under his foot as he steps on their faces, and then he’s gone, running faster than he thought possible, and with the oyabun dead there will be too much confusion for organised pursuit.

 

He chews on sweets as he runs, and doesn’t become tired for a long, long time.

 

-

 

The world is different outside of Suzuruma’s bar. It takes him a while to get used to the idea that he can’t say _yes, you can have me_ to everyone who wants him, because there’s not enough time. It doesn’t take nearly as long to get used to having sex in a bed.

 

Outside of a Yakuza bar you get a wide variety of people; women as well as men, for a start, shop workers on their day off, merchants in fastidious clothes who drink expensive sake, old men who just want their evening beer. They all want different things from him: he has to learn how to sit on top and move his hips just so until slowly, slowly they uncoil beneath him, how to make a show out of his own orgasm, how to tease and deny with a flirtatious grin. He still finds kissing unbearably strange, though, and refuses; people take it in their stride.

 

After he learns all of this, he goes back to picking up rough, scarred men most of the time, ones the hungry thing inside looks at and says, _yes_. The ones who throw him around and fuck him roughly and fist their hands in his hair, who hold him down by his throat and leave bruises on his hips and, unwittingly, scratch for him that appalling itch that he can’t reach himself. Maybe he’s just been ruined, and can’t stand the quiet life anymore if he ever could, needs the adrenaline rush and the edge of pain.

 

He hits the local bars on something like a rotation. This evening, his dive of choice is where all the non-Yakuza petty thugs can be found, drinking and arm-wrestling and showing off punishment tattoos and stolen jewelry. It’s low-class and barbaric; Yumichika sticks out like a sore thumb in his flower-patterned kimono, and he loves it. The first time he went, after the incredulous expressions were exhausted, a few men tried to gang up on him and mug him. They didn’t last long, and then everyone in the bar wanted him, including the owner. Said Yumichika brought a bit of class to the place, but it’s not true; what Yumichika brings is people who want to fuck him.

 

He almost feels more like a fight than sex tonight which, of course, is why he’s here. It’s not hard to find someone who wants him, and for all that this is his job, tonight he does not begrudge them even a little. The men in this place are uncomplicated men with uncomplicated tastes, and with a little encouragement most of them will give in to their barely-buried desire to grab his hair and hips and throw him around.

 

He feels the humming in the air at the same time he hears the commotion over by the door, and looks round. He would swear the feeling is -

 

Ikkaku. Yumichika would know him anywhere. Ikkaku _covered in blood_ , and Yumichika’s first thought is something between _that’s beautiful_ and _I wonder where he got that?_ The large man standing in his way clearly does not agree, and goes for something in his left pocket, and then there’s no time at all, and Yumichika decides.   
  


He palms his knife, swiftly appears behind the large man, and sticks the knife in his upper back, slicing clean through his spine. Lung puncture, too, by the sound of things.   
  


Ikkaku’s face is comically astonished. “You - I - Yumichika?”

 

“Yes. That man was about to knife you, so I got there first.” _You remembered my name_ , Yumichika thinks.

 

The initial shock seems to have worn off, and the expression Ikkaku is wearing now, as he takes in Yumichika’s completely bloodstain-free hands and clothes and how the knife is buried all the way to the hilt, is something like appreciation.  “I can handle myself, you know,” Ikkaku says, but he’s grinning widely now as if he’s about to laugh, and maybe it’s adrenaline but laughter wells up in Yumichika’s throat too, and he can’t stop his answering smile.

 

“I know,” he says, because he remembers, and they’re standing over a dead man grinning like idiots, and there’s only a few more seconds before everyone else at the bar gets over the momentary stupefaction and does something unhelpful. “Now, shall we leave? We need to get you cleaned up before anyone else tries to kill you.”

 

“All right.” Ikkaku shakes his head as if to clear it, and they leave at a half-run. Yumichika curses, because he’s clearly not going to be able to go back to his favourite rough dive, because Ikkaku has turned up again, and Yumichika has no intention whatsoever of letting him leave.

 

His landlady screams a bit when she sees Ikkaku, but calms down when Yumichika promises that it’s someone else’s blood. “You know I worry about you, dear,” she says, tsking. “And don’t be getting blood everywhere! It’s so hard to clean off.”

 

Yumichika smiles, and he doesn’t have to look to know that Ikkaku’s making an overdone _eh?_ expression. “I promise, Nakatoka-san,”

 

Upstairs, Yumichika attempts to clean the blood off Ikkaku in a businesslike fashion, but it’s difficult; the itch has not been scratched and he still wants to fight and taste blood and pain, and right in front of him is Ikkaku, who woke it with a single touch. Who didn’t want to fuck him, Yumichika reminds himself. Would Ikkaku resist, Yumichika wonders, if he knelt and mouthed Ikkaku’s cock through the thin fabric? He’s obscenely good with his mouth; would Ikkaku let him if he said, _you can close your eyes, pretend it’s a woman, if you like. Just let me, let me._

 

“So where did all the blood come from?” Yumichika says, conversationally.

 

“Fought someone,” he says, tapping the katana at his hip. That’s new; he must have gone to one of the better districts to get one of those, or at maybe blackmailed some Yakuza. “They lost.”

 

Yumichika hmms, pleased. Of course they lost. He’s cleaning the blood off, but part of him would prefer to lick it off, to taste Ikkaku and a dead man’s blood all in one. Maybe that would sate him – and then again, maybe not. The man he left dying on the ground did not; that was exhilarating, but not a struggle, not enough to take away his taste for a fight.

 

There isn’t a cut anywhere on Ikkaku, but there are plenty of scrapes and bruises. He doesn’t even grimace when Yumichika drags the cloth over them. “Do you often fight to the death?”

 

Ikkaku grins. “As often as I can,” he says, and Yumichika has to close his eyes and breathe to control himself. _Scratch me, bite me, fight me, fuck me, do you like to draw blood, do you have sex like a battle, would you hold me down with all your strength?_ He stands to fetch his largest garment, which is probably a bathrobe, and finds his pyjamas.

 

Ikkaku raises one eyebrow at the flowery garment, but Yumichika glares and says, “If you intend to sleep in my bed you are _not_ sleeping naked,” and he gives in. Yumichika looks away and changes himself, as swiftly as he can manage, feeling Ikkaku’s eyes on his back.

 

There’s not even any discussion about Ikkaku leaving, which is good because Yumichika would flatly refuse to allow it. He can’t imagine where Ikkaku was sleeping, but he’s afraid the answer might be _in an abandoned shed_ or _in a back alley_ from the atrocious state of his clothing, which is completely unsalvageable and will have to be burned.

 

They climb into bed, and Ikkaku groans. “God, this is so comfortable. You lucky bastard.”

 

 _Not really_ , Yumichika thinks. It took him a long time to settle, after leaving Suzuruma’s bar, to work out his rota and find a place that would take him for more than a few nights and earn enough money to not be hungry all the time. People, since, have tried to force him to do things he didn’t want to do, have evicted him from bars and inns, have tried to kill him, have ganged up on him in alleys and tried to take what they hadn’t paid for. _Lucky_ is not how he’d describe his life.

 

But he supposes, for a man from the seventy-somethingth, that a comfortable bed is indeed lucky, and he himself slept on a thin futon for decades, and so he tries to feel lucky. It’s not so hard, with Ikkaku next to him.

 

It’s a chilly night, but Yumichika’s still surprised when Ikkaku shuffles close and slips an arm around his torso. He tenses at first, expecting – he’s not sure what to expect, really. But Ikkaku just mumbles sleepily and curls against his back. Ikkaku isn’t even holding him in place, really. If Yumichika wanted he could easily remove the arm and escape. He doesn’t understand it at all: what is the purpose of this kind of touch?

 

“What are you doing?” He asks.

 

Ikkaku grouses and buries his face in Yumichika’s shoulder. “Warm,” he mumbles, half-asleep already. Which is a reason, Yumichika supposes, to sleep close together. He doesn’t know how to feel. It’s intensely vulnerable to be this close to someone – and how much does he trust Ikkaku?

 

_Entirely._

 

Which is one of the stupidest things he’s ever done and he did a lot of stupid things, when he was younger. Ikkaku is correct about the warmth; heat is seeping into every part of his body, and he finds himself relaxing slowly. Part of him is still a little – wary, but then part of him is always wary, even when he’s entirely alone and every small noise makes him tense. He’s probably safer sleeping beside Ikkaku even than he normally is: there will be two of them to deal with any possible threat. He supposes that he’s...comfortable. Hesitantly, he wraps one hand around Ikkaku’s forearm.

 

The descent into sleep is quick and easy, after that.

 

-

 

The wakeup is anything but. Yumichika wakes screaming and shaking, clutching at the bedsheets. He opens his eyes but it doesn’t stop: it wasn’t only a dream, and the memory and the pain have followed him. He can see and feel the room around him, his own bedroom, but his senses are still full of that damp room where he was locked in and sold to two faceless men. His body remembers perfectly, it seems - gives him the sensations over and over again, as painful and vivid as when it actually happened. He had forgotten, almost, how painful it was the first time.

 

He claws at Ikkaku’s arms round him, unsure whether he’s trying to hold on or fight him off. Squeezing his eyes shut doesn’t help; then there’s no visual cue to remind him that he’s not back there, it’s not happening again. It takes him a few long moments to register that Ikkaku’s talking.

“Fucking hell, Yumichika, what? Are you all right? What’s happening?” He’s not letting go, warm and solid and real against Yumichika’s back, and even if he doesn’t feel more vivid than the memory at least his presence means that Yumichika isn’t somehow trapped back there.

 

Yumichika takes deep, gulping breaths. He survived this once, and he can survive it again. He doesn’t know the answers to any of Ikkaku’s questions. He’s had this before, but only a little; almost ghostly half-real memories of touch, an instant of pain, that would attack him on the bad days when every brush of someone else’s clothes against his skin made him jump. “I don’t know,” he manages. “I was - remembering - ”

 

He doesn’t want to tell Ikkaku how broken he is sometimes. It’s still dark outside; they should go back to sleep. Maybe in the morning it will all seem like a dream, and Ikkaku won’t think he’s a freak.

 

Ikkaku has stopped talking frantically, and lies still. “Remembering?”

 

“It’s not important,” Yumichika says. And truly, he hasn’t thought of it in years. That the smell of damp rot and the sound of locking doors make him panic has become just another fact of life, mostly removed from the memory of their origin. He remembers now, of course. His face pressed into the dirt, coins exchanging hands, and pain.

 

“I think it is,” Ikkaku says uncertainly. “D’you often wake up - like that?”

 

“No,” Yumichika says, and it’s the truth. It’s settling. The remembered feelings are becoming fainter, the pain is diminishing, and Ikkaku’s warmth is more real than either.

 

A long hesitation, and then, “If you want, I’ll...go, or whatever - ”

 

“No,” Yumichika interrupts, then swallows and forces himself to sound calm as he says, “No, that’s fine. You can stay.” He notes that his fingers are digging into Ikkaku’s forearm; probably, he’s fooling no one. He listens to his breathing and makes it come more slowly and deeply. Eventually, his heartbeat follows.

 

Ikkaku is still awake, still listening. Still holding him but not too tightly. Perhaps, after all, he is owed an explanation. “When I first came here I was…a lot younger. Hungry and stupid. I was sleeping on some woman’s floor, and one day, she sold me. Locked me in with these two men, and...it hurt.”

 

Behind him, Ikkaku’s breathing stops for a second. “Shit,” he says after a time. “Shit.” Yumichika doesn’t know what he was expecting, but he supposes that about covers it.

 

“Go back to sleep, Ikkaku,” he says.

 

At length, Ikkaku’s breathing evens and slows into a sleep rhythm. Yumichika listens to his breath, eyes wide open because sleep is no longer an appealing prospect, and tries to convince himself that he’s safe here. In the hours that follow he feels a few more faint echoes, tensing to avoid waking Ikkaku.

 

Eventually, with the beginnings of dawn creeping through the window, exhaustion drags him into a fitful doze.

 

-

 

In the morning Yumichika makes tea, and they don’t talk about the night before. Ikkaku doesn’t say anything about the dark circles under Yumichika’s eyes, and Yumichika doesn’t mention doesn’t mention the way Ikkaku keeps looking at him for just a few seconds too long.

 

“So I guess you managed to get out of the Yakuza,” Ikkaku says eventually. He sounds halfway curious and halfway impressed, both of which are confusing. Ikkaku would laugh and cut down anyone who tried to stop him doing something he wanted, and Yumichika doesn’t understand why Ikkaku wants to know about his life from back then. He already knows all that’s relevant, surely. Yumichika was a whore in a Yakuza bar, then he left, and now he’s here. They call him _kagema_ now a lot of the time, but he’s still a whore.  

 

Yumichika rolls his eyes. “I was never in the Yakuza,” he says, opening a bamboo box full of onigiri from yesterday and placing it on the table between them.

 

“You know what I mean,” Ikkaku says. “It’s not like they packed you a bento box and sent you merrily on your way, ne?”

 

Yumichika pours tea, first for Ikkaku then for himself. Ikkaku raises his eyebrows at Yumichika’s tea set - well, was he expecting a tin pot? - and is, thankfully, careful with the small china teacup. “I wasn’t really planning to leave,” he explains. “But then the _oyabun_ started coming to visit, and he was so ugly and unpleasant. So I killed him, and left.”   
  
Ikkaku blinks at him, tea neglected in his hands. “You killed a guy because...he was ugly?”

 

Yumichika lifts one shoulder noncommittally, then selects an onigiri. “Gaaran was - many kinds of ugly.”

  
Ikkaku puts his cup down. “I’ve heard that name. He was supposed to be a real nasty piece of work.” He swallows and eyes the onigiri. “Load of crazy rumours going round. Like they found him naked in a cellar with his head half cut off. Or - he was torturing some kid for kicks, and one day the kid flipped out and stabbed him with his own knife.”

 

Ikkaku is staring at him. Yumichika holds his gaze for a long time. “Eat your breakfast,” he says eventually, offering a small smile, and he pushes the bamboo box gently in Ikkaku’s direction.

 

Ikkaku obeys and Yumichika presumes that’s the end of that conversation. But a few minutes later, Ikkaku speaks again. “I wouldn’t go near ‘em again. Yakuza folks over that way half love you, half hate you, and they’re all scared of you. Might try and kill you, or something.”

 

Yumichika’s smile is real this time. He waves the hand that isn’t holding onigiri dismissively. “I can handle a few mindless thugs.”

 

Ikkaku takes a huge bite. “Yeah, sounds like I don’t need to worry about you.”

 

Yumichika can’t hold in a wince. “Don’t talk with your mouth full; it’s ugly.”

 

Ikkaku glares, but he swallows dutifully. “You ever felt like learning how to use a sword?”

 

Yumichika’s first thought is _how unwieldy_ , before he manages to parse this as an offer to teach him. He examines his nails for dirt, and doesn’t look Ikkaku in the eye. “Perhaps, if you’re an adequate teacher.”

 

Ikkaku grins at him, and he can’t help but smile into his teacup. And in the back of his head, something like the victorious shriek of a bird.

 

-

 

The second thing Yumichika becomes really, really good at is fighting.

 

Ikkaku might like to think it’s because of him, but really Yumichika teaches Ikkaku just as much as the other way around. Ikkaku is strong and quick with sword, but he likes to throw himself into battle; Yumichika teaches him about hiding a knife up your sleeve, how to fight when your hands are tied, how to kill someone before they can make a sound, fast and brutal and merciless because that’s how he learned. There is no safety in mercy.

 

The first time they train, they pick a dead-end alley, and Ikkaku kicks out some street kids to give them the space. He hands Yumichika his sword, and shows him how to tuck it into his belt and draw it.

 

Yumichika draws the sword and turns it in his hands uncertainly. “I don’t think this is going to work,” he says. “It’s not me. I mean - it’s not mine,” he corrects himself. Resheathing it, he hands it back to Ikkaku, and the uncomfortable feeling at the base of his spine recedes. It’s a beautiful sword, clean and well-crafted, and probably the only thing Ikkaku owns that isn’t bent or torn or tarnished. Yumichika tried to get him some clothes and shoes and other paraphernalia, and Ikkaku refused for hours before giving in with a, _You know they’re only gonna get broken, right?_  Which isn’t the point at all. The point is - he can afford them, so why would he let Ikkaku wander round in rags? Ikkaku just looked at him then and said, _Well, if we can afford all this pointless crap, why are you even - you know - working?_

 

Yumichika doesn’t have a clear answer to that one. At some point over the past few weeks their money became each other’s money, stored in a box under Ikkaku’s bed. He knows it makes Ikkaku uncomfortable, but he doesn’t understand _why_ , whether it’s how much money he has or how he made it or something else entirely. Especially since this sword has to have been expensive. “Where did you get it, anyway?”

 

Ikkaku scratches his neck and looks down. “Eh, it’s a bit of a weird story,” he says.

 

Stolen, then? Not that Yumichika cares; a sword this beautiful should be in the hands of someone who wields it beautifully, and Ikkaku does. Yumichika could watch him fight for hours, and sometimes does, walking around the less desirable parts of town with Ikkaku all day and just watching, waiting. Ikkaku says he likes Yumichika to be there, says it makes them look like an easier target, and Yumichika likes it; proving someone _dead_ wrong can be so satisfying. No one comes close to matching Ikkaku, though, so he never has to. “Tell me anyway.”

 

Ikkaku frowns. “Not much to tell. I got really drunk this one time a few decades back - just after I bumped into you that first time, actually. Had this really fuckin’ weird dream...I was in this red desert, and I had to find an oasis, and I could see loads of them but only one was real...anyway, I woke up in some abandoned building holding my sword. No idea how I got there. I guess I must’ve nicked it.” He shrugs. Yumichika wonders if he knows he’s running one thumb up and down the saya almost protectively.

 

Ikkaku doesn’t offer Yumichika his sword again, and for a while they spar with sticks. Ikkaku is stronger, Yumichika is faster, and they go through a lot of sticks until Yumichika finds himself lingering outside an antique shop with several decorative swords in the window.

 

He’s drawn to a simpler sword without engraving, with a purple tsuka and red saya. The shopkeeper talks at length about its history and previous owners, pulls it out of the saya to show him the blade, and runs her finger along its blunt edge. “I wouldn’t try to sharpen it,” she says. “Not that a nice young man like you would, of course. But it won’t hold an edge - hasn’t been made to.”  
  
Yumichika smiles blandly at her, and though it costs almost all of their money, he buys it because he feels as though, if he walks out of the shop without it, he will have left a part of himself behind. It’s not that much of a problem; he will just work tonight. It’s fine, though Ikkaku will look at him askance for working on his days off. Well, he already has more days off than most people, since Ikkaku arrived.

 

It’s probably all because of that time Ikkaku walked in on him working. He was entertaining one of his regulars - a rough man with rougher tastes, but he hums just a little with reiryoku and Yumichika found himself agreeing, one day, when he asked if he could bind Yumichika’s hands behind his back. After all, he survived Gaaran, even bound like that.

 

So of course Ikkaku walked in on him on his knees, face pressed against the bed and hands tied at the small of his back, halfway to orgasm under a large man yanking on his hair and tearing at his hip. Ikkaku’s face, for the brief instant he could see it, was halfway between horrified and something else, something darker and dilated pupils and clenched fists. Almost how Ikkaku looks during a good fight, and it’s enough that Yumichika buried his face in the duvet and succumbed. There was an approving grunt from behind him, and the gentle click of the door shutting.

 

He shakes his head to clear it, and tucks the sword into his obi. It feels right, sitting there against his hip. Appropriately heavy - almost heavier than it felt in the shop. He would have worked every night for a month for this sword, marched right over Ikkaku’s protests, which he doesn’t understand, anyway. He knows the house they rent adjacent rooms in isn’t especially well soundproofed, but when Yumichika hinted that he’d be perfectly all right, really, if Ikkaku wanted to rent a room down the street, Ikkaku looked almost offended.

 

He hasn’t suggested it again, and Ikkaku still ends up in his room on cold nights.

 

It’s not until he shows his sword to Ikkaku that evening that he realises he has chosen a sword whose colours exactly mirror Ikkaku’s own. They match, and if that thought gives him a little quiet pleasure, then it’s no one’s business but his.

 

“It’s not sharp,” he says, offering it to Ikkaku with both hands. “But, I thought I could at least use it in training, and we can spar properly.”

 

Ikkaku grins at the prospect, and takes the sword. Yumichika ignores the small flash of discomfort that says that it’s his sword, because he and Ikkaku have shared almost everything that could be shared, almost everything that they have. “Nice,” he says, unsheathing and swinging it around in one hand a little. “Good weight, too. It’ll be good for practise.” He runs the sword along his palm - “Shit,” he says, and holds up his hand to Yumichika’s face with a scowl. “I thought you said it wasn’t sharp!”

 

Yumichika looks at Ikakku’s bleeding hand, to the sword, and back again. “I - the woman who sold it to me said it couldn’t hold an edge, that it was just decorative.” His hand reaches out and wraps round Ikkaku’s wrist, brings Ikkaku’s hand to his mouth and he laps at the blood there.

 

They both stop for half a second, then Ikkaku draws his hand back. “You hungry, or something?” He says, somewhere between confused and annoyed - and he’s right, Yumichika is _starving_ even though he ate this morning, could eat three days worth of food or take three men at once or taste more of Ikkaku’s blood ( _or open your hungry heart and eat him alive, do you remember, you couldn’t feel him anymore even before you cut his throat, because you ate the humming part of him_ ) -

 

“Oi, Yumi, you all right?” Ikkaku is shaking his shoulder. Yumichika swallows, takes the tie out of his hair and rakes his fingers across his scalp.

 

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just - I’m working tonight, okay? That sword was expensive.”

 

Ikkaku sighs, but he looks at the sword and looks at Yumichika and says, “Eh, well, it’s a good sword. Let’s get a drink.”

 

-

 

Later, Yumichika will blame the dreams for the stupid, stupid thing he does next.

 

Sometimes, there’s glowing vines that seem to come from his body, and all he knows is that they are hungry. Sometimes there’s the shriek of a beautiful bird. Sometimes, Gaaran is there, and Yumichika tells him, I’m going to eat you alive, and watches him struggle uselessly. Sometimes he slits Gaaran’s throat and drinks the blood there, and this time Gaaran has time to scream, but it still won’t save him because they’re in a jungle instead of a cellar, and this is Yumichika’s place.

 

He wakes up starving and clawing at his own skin. Ikkaku is beginning to give him strange looks when he thinks Yumichika isn’t watching, and it’s terribly hypocritical because Ikkaku is beginning to look strained, too: he hasn’t had a decent fight in weeks. They spar almost daily, and Yumichika is half-waiting for the day when Ikkaku forgets it isn’t a real fight and tries to kill him. There’s a part of him that wants to know what would happen. There’s another part, and that’s most of him, that is terribly afraid of what he would do.

 

They’re going to have to leave soon, and go further out where there are more fights to be had. For that they need more money, if they want to have places to sleep and adequate food, and perhaps it’s also that that’s responsible for his stupidity.

  
This is how it happens: Yumichika’s doing a turn in one of the classier places he knows. If he’s honest, he doesn’t feel like being here - he’s half trying to appease Ikkaku and half avoiding him. He doesn’t want to have that conversation about the bruises on his neck that Ikkaku found him covering up with makeup this morning, because he knows how it’ll go. Yes, they’re from a client. Yes, I let him. I’m fine; I’m fine. No, I’m not going to stop over a few bruises. You do remember, don’t you, that I could have killed him between one breath and the next?

 

The man who walks over to him is clearly not from around here. His clothes fit in but the rest of him doesn’t; something about the way he shies away from physical contact with the rest of the patrons, even though the people here are reasonably washed. This theory is confirmed when he stands next to Yumichika at the bar and says, “They did tell me you would be beautiful.”

 

It’s not all that uncommon, especially in this bar, to find patrons from the 50s, or even higher; _you can’t find a good whore anywhere above the 60th_ is frequently bandied about. Most tourists end up in the 62nd, which has a reputation for that sort of thing, but you do get a few here in the 65th who find it pleasing to “slum it” for a few days. But Yumichika has never heard the accent this man is attempting to conceal; is he from the 30s? 20s? The extortionate cross-district carriage fees would be nothing to him if he is, but that doesn’t explain why he would travel for days to get here. Unless there’s something particular he wants.   
  


Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “They?”

 

The man smiles, and Yumichika supposes that he would be considered handsome, with blond hair that brushes his shoulders and a smooth face. The low hum of reiatsu, much fainter than Ikkaku’s but still unmistakable, is more appealing than his face or figure to Yumichika. “You have quite a reputation, you know. The kagema in the flower kimono.” _Go to the 50s if you want a kagema_ , Yumichika thinks: _here, there are only whores_. “As well as for dealing with clients who have more...unusual tastes.” Yumichika smiles blandly, because if there’s a sexual service he hasn’t performed he will be more than surprised, and there’s little that he would consider unusual anymore. But then the man slips a hand round his wrist, and although his grip is not tight, it’s enough that Yumichika knows exactly what he wants.

 

The part of him that wants to run is utterly drowned by the vicious hunger that has been roiling in him for weeks, just below the surface.  He’ll be safe; he knows a hundred ways to kill a man without his hands, and if he can’t be covered in someone else’s blood then he’ll take being covered in his own. He allows the man to pull him closer and take the other wrist. “Perhaps we should reconvene in my room to discuss this, hmm?”

 

The hungry expression he receives in response is no surprise. The man lets go of Yumichika’s wrists before they depart, though Yumichika would have allowed the man to lead him along like a pet, if he wished to pay for it. Still, Yumichika thinks this man is more used to the kagema and hosts employed by tea houses in, probably, the 20s than he is to people here; he walks side by side with Yumichika, opens doors for him, and does not touch him at all until the door to Yumichika’s bedroom is closed.

 

With one hand looped loosely around Yumichika’s wrist, Azaro explains what he wants. He says that he would like to bind Yumichika’s wrists, and that he can do so safely and in a way that’s easy to remove. He takes various tools out of his black cloth bag and shows them to Yumichika, allows him to handle them, and waits for his approval. Among the tools - well-crafted, and made chiefly of leather - there is a short whip-like thing, and when Yumichika swallows and says, “Not this one,” Azaro winds it around his hand and puts it carefully back in the bag without a word of protest (it’s hard to get the words out, but he has to, or he knows how it’ll go). Azaro explains that he likes to talk, and that he hopes for but does not require Yumichika’s response.

 

It’s all so very polite and civilized that Yumichika doesn’t know what to do with himself; Azaro treats him almost as if he is delicate. Yumichika is aware that he looks delicate, but people around here either don’t care, or enjoy breaking delicate things.

 

Azaro has done this before, that much is clear. Warm fingers carefully undo his obi and slip off his kimono, and even fold it and place it on the bed. Azaro runs light, ghosting touches across his shoulders, down the sides of his hips and up his back, and Yumichika has to close his eyes to endure because he was prepared for pain, not for - whatever this is. Men are strange creatures in the upper districts, it seems. “So beautiful,” Azaro murmurs into his ear, and places a line of kisses down the side of his neck. Yumichika shivers.

 

It’s much more comfortable, really, when Azaro pushes him onto his knees and ties his wrists above his head, anchored on a hook. The rope is made of oddly soft material that does not bite or chafe. The final surprise is the large coin that Azaro places in Yumichika’s left hand as he says, “If it’s too much, open your hand and drop this, and I’ll stop.” None of which makes any sense; he has paid for this, and handsomely, so why would it be all right if Yumichika wanted him to stop? Yumichika takes a breath, and concentrates on holding on to the coin.

 

Nails down his back, sharp and well manicured, and no one from around here has nails like that. The strokes are light, almost ticklish, and then, ever so slowly, firmer and firmer. It has Yumichika chasing the edge of pain, and when Azaro digs in and _rakes_ , the sound out of his mouth is not a complaint but a moan. “Like that, exactly like that,” Azaro says.

 

Next, an implement: the one with many tails. It’s more satisfying than the scratch of fingernails, because Yumichika can feel the weight of impact reverberating through him. It’s all on his upper back and shoulders, warming them, and the pain is becoming more prominent but it hardly feels like pain. It feels like there’s no more room for thought, and he only comes back to himself when Azaro pauses for a moment. Then, he realises how much _noise_ he’s making, and how he can’t imagine this being over anytime soon. “Please...gag me,” he says.

 

“Open your mouth,” Azaro says, and though he remembers seeing some gags in Azaro’s bag, what’s pushed into his mouth is the fabric of his obi. It’ll be ruined, of course - but it will muffle his sounds more effectively.

 

A few moment later he’s grateful for it as something stings his inner thigh and he can’t contain a loud, surprised cry of pain. _Cane_ , he thinks, and this unlike the others is truly painful; sharp and sudden, and it makes him tense and twitch with every stroke. No one has ever hit him here before, and he clenches his fists and endures.

 

That’s not exactly true. Part of him endures; the starving, violent part of him _revels_ , like a beggar to a banquet. It takes its pleasure and returns it to the rest of him, and that’s almost harder to bear than the pain. There’s the sound of the cane being placed on the floor, and Azaro’s hand trails up and down the inside of his thigh. “Shhh,” he says into Yumichika’s ear. “You’re not used to this, are you?” He strokes both hands up and down Yumichika’s sides, and presses a kiss to the top of his right shoulder. “It’s all right, just a little more.” His voice is different; low and gravelly and satisfied, even though he’s hardly touched Yumichika with anything but his hands.

 

He has soaked through the gag by the time Azaro puts the cane down for the second time. There’s a hand on his inner thigh again, then Azaro is right behind him. “You’re bleeding,” he says, and reaches his hand round for Yumichika to see, using the other to remove the sodden obi. Yumichika reaches his tongue out to lick the blood off Azaro’s fingers, and hears a low growl in his ear as Azaro pushes bloody fingers into his mouth. “Ah, you like it,” he says with satisfaction, and wraps his free hand around Yumichika’s cock, stroking once, soft and slow.

 

Yumichika can only moan in response. His legs are beginning to ache, from the awkward spread of his knees to the hot, painful throb of his inner thighs that he supposes are covered in welts. He looks at the wall and waits, and the shuffling sounds from behind him aren’t enough to tell him what’s going on.   
  
He knows, though, when Azaro grips his hips. Something smells of jasmine, and he supposes it’s the lubricant. Azaro is firm but does not hurt him, though he’s already so sore on his legs and back that the motion aggravates it. Overstimulated, it’s not long at all before he says, “Please may I come?”

 

Azaro sinks his teeth into Yumichika’s neck and digs in with his fingers on Yumichika’s hips. He lets go long enough to say, “Not yet,” and that’s the first time anyone has ever said no so for a moment he’s not sure he can obey. But he does, he can, he holds himself on the edge through the bites to his shoulder and calculated snap of Azaro’s hips. His whole body is shaking in earnest, and the noises he’s making sound like some sort of wounded animal, but he can’t control any of it if he’s to follow his instruction. Azaro wraps a hand across Yumichika’s mouth. “Hold on,” he says, and his own breathing is ragged. “Hold on for me.”

 

Yumichika squeezes his eyes shut tight and tries to find something to hang on to, like the pain, but it doesn’t help at all; he’s so flooded with sensation that it’s just another one. Azaro presses a kiss to Yumichika’s shoulder and says, “Come,” into his ear, and Yumichika’s body obeys before he has time to think, glad for the muffling hand across his mouth and the rope which keeps him upright.

 

He’s too far gone, afterward, to be properly aware of Azaro turning him round and finishing on his face, removing the ties round his wrists and lowering him to the ground, fetching his duvet from the bed and draping it over him.   
  
Azaro lies down next to him with a sigh, but does not touch him further. “Gods, it’s been a while since someone exhausted me like this,” he says. Yumichika won’t be able to work for days while his marks heal, but he honestly doesn’t care because the hungry, violent thing is sleeping, sated, and he doesn’t feel at all like scratching off his own skin.

 

Azaro does not linger. He leaves money on the bed, packs and leaves with a single, “Thank you,” before Yumichika has really properly recovered.

 

It’s once he’s left that the shaking starts again. At first Yumichika thinks he’s cold, or hungry, but food seems like an absurd amount of effort, and he’s too disgusting to put on pyjamas and go to bed, so he throws on his dirty kimono and fetches some water from his and Ikkaku’s shared bathroom.

 

 _Obedient little thing, aren’t you? You make lovely sounds when you’re in pain._ The nausea strikes as he closes his bedroom door and removes his kimono once more, but he has to continue, has to wash the sweat off his body and the come out of his hair. It’s difficult, and his hands are shaking, and when the memory of cold hands and pain like a whip and suffocating darkness overtakes him, he ends up hugging his knees on the floor beside a large bucket of water, naked and cold and shaking and trying, trying not to make so much noise that he wakes Ikkaku, whose snores he could hear when he walked past.

 

It’s a futile effort; a few moments later there’s a knock on the door and “...Yumi?” in Ikkaku’s sleepy voice, and the door is pushed open a fraction. “Fucking _hell_!”

 

Yumichika looks up from under his stringy hair. Ikkaku has a candle, and his face is utterly horrified. He approaches, and Yumichika can’t help the flinch, even though it’s Ikkaku. “Please don’t touch me,” he says, and it’s hoarse and shaky but Ikkaku stops anyway, then approaches more slowly but doesn’t touch.   
  


“Gods, Yumichika,” Ikkaku swallows. “You’re...bleeding,” he says. “Do I need to go and beat the shit out of - ”

  
“No.” Yumichika insists, because it’s not Azaro’s fault that he’s this broken, not Azaro’s fault that some days he lies in bed awake all night because he can’t handle any more nightmares, that what they did seems to have triggered it again even though it was so different, but he can feel the ache of the welts on his legs and there’s still come in his hair and it’s enough. Enough that his mind conjures up the feeling of Gaaran’s long thumbnail at his jugular, the memory of the rough hemp rope round his wrists, and it blends lurchingly with long, warm fingers and silk knots round his wrist, taints it, makes him feel as though every touch since then has only made him dirtier. “It’s not his fault,” he says.

 

Ikkaku puts the candle down and makes an aborted reaching gesture, then rubs his head. “I don’t get it,” he says. “You’re hurt. I - what do I do?”

 

Yumichika swallows. He really is cold now. “Leave me alone,” he says, voice as steady as he can manage.

 

Ikkaku hesitates half-through the doorway for a long time. Then he picks up the candle again. “All right,” he says. “I’m just, uh, next door if - if you want me.”

 

Yumichika rests his forehead on his knees and waits for it to be over. It doesn’t end; he’s just sitting on the floor crying stupidly and eventually, flashback or no, he uncoils and begins to wash his hair. The activity is a little grounding, a counterpoint to the memory of pain that feels real but isn’t. He washes himself slowly, methodically, compensating for the shaking of his limbs as best he can. Eventually the memories become a little less real as he gets cleaner, as if he is washing them off.

 

He’s exhausted; completely exhausted, and he barely has the strength to dry himself and wring out his hair and rifle through his cupboard to see if there’s anything immediately edible. There’s a single rice cake, and it isn’t enough but he’s not sure he could stomach much more, anyway. He pulls on pyjamas and crawls into bed, but it’s almost worse without anything to do, without the physical motions of cleaning and dressing. Exhausted or not, he won’t be able to sleep like this, not with _Look at the state of you_ and _here I thought you’d be tough_ echoing in his head.

 

It takes long minutes to force his limbs to move, to pull himself upright, and then he hesitates for even longer outside Ikkaku’s door. He rarely goes into Ikkaku’s room, and never has at night, never like this.

 

The door isn’t properly closed, and the slightest push causes it to slide open. Yumichika hovers in the doorway. “Ikkaku?”

 

He’s not sure what the protocol is; Ikkaku normally just pads his way in and makes himself comfortable, as if he knows that the warning sound of approaching feet will wake Yumichika so his arrival is not a surprise awakening. Surprise awakenings aren’t good for Yumichika; the first time Ikkaku tried to play a wakeup prank on him he almost stabbed him, half panicked and half on sheer reflex. Ikkaku hasn’t repeated the experiment.

 

Ikkaku sits up and makes a confused, sleepy noise, arm groping for - his sword? “That you, Yumi?” He looks round, lets his arm drop, and lies back down. “C’mere.”

 

Yumichika hesitantly steps forward, wary of tripping over Ikkaku’s abandoned shoes or something, and slips under the covers on one edge of the small bed. Ikkaku grouses and rolls over. “C’mere,” he repeats, lying on his back, and encourages Yumichika over until he’s lying in the crook of Ikkaku’s arm, head on Ikkaku’s shoulder. Even though Ikkaku is half-asleep, the arm that he wraps round Yumichika’s back is careful. He doesn’t ask if Yumichika is all right.

 

Yumichika tries to relax, make his breathing slow and deepen, but he’s fighting the panic in his mind and it isn’t easy. It’s better here, though; he’s finally warming up, and this whole room smells of Ikkaku. He supposes Ikkaku must be asleep by now, but he’s not averse to lying here until morning, if there’s no sleep to be had for him.

 

“I’ll kill anyone who hurts you,” Ikkaku says, and he sounds perfectly awake now. Yumichika wants to say something like _I can handle it_ , or _wouldn’t get many returning clients that way_ , or even, maybe, _I already killed him_. But that’s not what this is about. “Rip their guts out and break all their bones. A clean death’s too good for ‘em.”

  
Yumichika doesn’t reply, but he does reach out one hand and lay it on Ikkaku’s chest. He can feel Ikkaku’s heartbeat through his palm, and slowly, slowly, his own relaxes to match it.


	3. Chapter 3

They unanimously agree to leave without either of them talking about it. Nakatoka-san cries and waves them off, but they’ve paid up all their rent and left behind lots of things that she can sell. Yumichika doesn’t regret the loss nearly as much as he thought he would; he still has the sword after all, and it’s the most beautiful thing he has ever owned, so it’s all right.

 

Yumichika gets to watch many, many more fights, and it’s _glorious_. Ikkaku is never more beautiful than when he’s skewering people with a grin on his face, and it’s only half because Yumichika can feel his reiatsu much more strongly when he fights. Every so often, Ikkaku will beckon Yumichika to join, and those times are even better, but mostly, he’s happy to watch Ikkaku in his element. He wouldn’t ever take that away from Ikkaku, not even if Ikkaku were losing.

 

It’s even all right when they’re holed up in some cold, abandoned building in the 72nd, huddling together under a blanket. Without Ikkaku Yumichika would go back to his old life, of course, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like this one.

 

The dreams are back; they do so much travelling that he doesn’t work steadily, grabbing pieces of satiation for himself wherever he can, in alleyways and against walls and on dusty floors. Once they get into the 70s no one has any real money, just these carved wooden bits, and precious little of that. He can tell Ikkaku’s worried about him, worried about the way he’ll get down on his knees for a jar of water, but it’s not as if he can explain that he gets a piece of his sanity back, too.

 

He doesn’t tell Ikkaku about that one man in the 71st who fell unconscious into a gutter, when it had been more than a week since he’d worked or fought and just for a moment, the screaming hunger obliterated everything in his mind. Thereafter he fights more; past the 69th, no one cares who or how you kill. More people try to mug him, too, since he sticks out here even worse than he did in the 66th, and he handles it.

 

Still, coming all the way out to the 79th wasn’t a good idea, Yumichika thinks. For one thing, it’s a long walk back to civilization since the carriage only comes once a month, and for another, most of the people here seem to either be dead, dying or hiding from everyone else. Not much fight left in them. Ikkaku, of course, is still shouting challenges out loud enough to echo down the whole...street, for the lack of a better word.

 

Laughter, the childish laughter of a young girl, echoes down the street. Ikkaku runs towards it, but Yumichika hangs back, feeling. The reiatsu - and it’s unmistakably hers, sharp and energetic - is _massive_. Maybe that’s why Ikkaku is running, even though he can’t feel reiatsu as well as Yumichika can.  
  
Is it all hers? There’s a sudden blast of reiatsu, and then Yumichika can feel what he should have felt all along: there’s two people with reiatsu other than him and Ikkaku. A man this time, whose reiatsu is screaming for blood loudly enough, for once, that he can hear it over Ikkaku’s.

 

All three exit the alley, and the girl is even younger than he thought, not a toddler anymore but not far from it. She’s mostly clean, with bright pink hair, and she seems cheerful as if well-fed. Unusual for around here. She takes up position next to Yumichika and looks at him with interest.  
  
Ikkaku and the other man are squaring off, and Yumichika allows himself a small smile. The man has at least six inches on Ikkaku in height, and his whole body is vast, broad shoulders and barrel chest and muscular arms. It will be a good fight for Ikkaku, he thinks. With the reiatsu he feels, perhaps even good enough for Yumichika to join in.

 

“Ikkaku,” he says.

 

Ikkaku grins, and holds his sword up. “No helping out.”  
  
“All right,” Yumichika says, and watches. Watching will be almost as good this time.

 

It’s like no fight Yumichika has ever seen. How is a man so large and strong also so _fast_? Ikkaku holds his own, but fear begins to trickle into Yumichika’s stomach; the man’s reiatsu is rising still, slowly, as if he’s trying to draw this out as long as possible.

 

“Oh, Ken-chan’s smiling!” The little girl with the pink hair says. “It’s a shame it’ll be over soon…”

 

He’s more than a match for Ikkaku, and still getting faster, and - that’s a smile? It looks more like some demon’s grimace. It feels to Yumichika as though his sword shifts in his obi, hungering for a fight, because the little pink girl is _right_ \- Ikkaku can’t win this. He’s not going to win this, he’s going to die, and Yumichika promised faithfully that he wouldn’t help but he _didn’t_ promise that he would just watch Ikkaku die.

 

_We could bleed him dry._

 

Yumichika shivers. He needs to get back to civilization, to his job and his life.

 

 _All that delicious reiatsu...he would sate us for weeks_.

 

He can’t do that to Ikkaku. Ikkaku would never forgive him. He wants to close his eyes and not have to see Ikkaku cut down, but he can’t; he knows Ikkaku would want him to see. He forces himself to watch as the demon moves too fast to even follow , slices, and reappears behind Ikkaku.

 

He bites down on his tongue, smelling blood.

 

But Ikkaku is alive, just; Yumichika can still feel him, and so can the man because he’s talking, telling Ikkaku to come fight him again. The last thing he says before walking off with the little pink girl on his shoulders is his name: Kenpachi no Zaraki. It’s not a name at all; the unkillable one of Zaraki district, no. 80.

 

The crowd is dispersing now, so Yumichika walks towards Ikkaku and kneels down beside him.

 

“Yumi…” Ikkaku starts, as if there’s something he wants to _say_ while his chest is ripped to pieces.

 

“Shut up,” Yumichika says, and rips the bottom edge off his kimono then uses it to bind Ikkaku’s chest and stop the bleeding as best he can.

 

“You didn’t help,” Ikkaku manages, and coughs wetly, but one hand curls around Yumichika’s wrist and holds on.

 

Yumichika rolls his eyes. “Of course not,” he says, and lifts Ikkaku till he’s approximately upright, one arm across Yumichika’s shoulders, and Yumichika can drag him back to the abandoned shack they’re currently squatting in and have it look something like he’s just helping Ikkaku walk. “As if you’d have ever shut up about it if I had.”

 

Eventually, he lays Ikkaku down on the dirty floor and feeds him some water and a piece of bread. “You die on me, Ikkaku, and I’ll kill you,” he says. “I’ll follow you back to the living world and kill you again. Then follow you back here, of course. So you might as well save yourself the hassle and just live.”

 

Ikkaku offers a weak grin, but he’s tired. Yumichika hopes it’s a healing sleep he’s falling into. He grabs a blanket and curls up next to Ikkaku, close as he can manage, and if he could feed Ikkaku some of his own reiatsu to make up the deficit, he would. He can’t, though, so he settles for sharing body heat and breath and blood, and some sick part of him considers taking his sword and slicing his own skin to spread his blood over Ikkaku, and then it would be a proper sharing.

 

He licks blood off his fingers absently and thinks, _is there reiatsu in blood?_ Ikkaku’s tastes sweeter than anyone else’s, but Yumichika had always thought that was just because he’s Ikkaku. Maybe not; maybe the blood of Kenpachi no Zaraki would be sweet as well, or perhaps not sweet but still taste like _reiatsu_ , somehow, though he’s sure reiatsu shouldn’t have a taste.

 

It does, though. It does, and he’s still hungry. A little less hungry than he was before the fight, though that could just be tiredness or nausea or adrenaline. When Ikkaku is well - maybe before, if Yumichika can find some way to take him - they’ll go back to the 78th, where there are at least proper and shops and inns, and have a decent meal.

 

Ikkaku mumbles in his sleep, and Yumichika holds on as tightly as he dares.

 

-

 

Ikkaku’s still there in the morning, still breathing, though his cuts are still oozing in places. Yumichika prods him till he wakes and then makes him eat the last of a stale loaf of bread, then walks most of the way to the 78th in search of someone selling food. He’s exhausted and starving before he finds a woman selling plain onigiri, and he buys enough to last a few days and steels himself for the walk home. He eats as he walks, wondering if he should have bought more, but he’ll be no good to anyone passed out on the street.  
  
No one asks him about his kimono, once so beautiful, now much shorter than it should be, ripped along the bottom and stained with blood. When Yumichika gets back to Ikkaku, he’s awake and annoyed.

 

“You coulda said where you were going. Thought you’d - left, or something.” He tries to sit up and fails, and the sound of his breathing is all wrong. Yumichika wants to just curl up next to him again and eat onigiri and wait for him to be well.

 

He examines his nails; they’re filthy. He should wash his hands before doing what he’s about to do, really, but he’s not sure they can spare the water. “If I were going to leave, I’d have done it when you suggested coming to the 79th. It’s _vile_ out here, and the minute you can stand I am dragging you as far up the 70s as I can.”

 

Ikkaku nods. “I wanna find him again, once I’m healed up. I reckon he’s gone up the districts - nothing special out in the 80th.”

 

Yumichika’s stomach clenches. He should eat some more, and feed Ikkaku too; he opens the bag of onigiri and pushes it towards Ikkaku. “You’ve been?”

 

Ikkaku stills. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then reaches for some onigiri. “Just on the outskirts. Not much there but dead people rotting.”

 

When they’ve finished eating, Yumichika closes up the bag and shucks his kimono. There’s nothing clean for him to don - the kimono was his last clean thing - so he puts on an old Yukata that is stained rather than actively dirty.Then he rips his kimono into strips.

 

“Oi, you planning on bandaging me up with flowery kimono?” Ikkaku clearly hasn’t noticed that he’s _already_ bandaged in flowery kimono.

 

Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “I’ll stop when you can fight me off.”

 

Ikkaku continues to grumble under his breath, but when it comes time to peel off the bandage covering the huge gash down his chest, he clutches at Yumichika’s thigh hard with one hand. Yumichika doesn’t say anything, just rinses off the wound as best he can and rewraps it.

 

It’s dark by the time he’s done, and Ikkaku has gone quiet. Yumichika lies down next to him, exhausted all of a sudden, and pulls the blanket over them.

 

“You don’t hafta look after me like this,” Ikkaku mumbles. “ll’be fine.”

 

Yumichika would elbow him in the gut if he could. “Don’t be stupid,” he says.

 

-

 

It’s a little over a week later by the time they’re in the 78th eating the best hot dinner the best inn of the 78th can provide. Which is to say, a bowl of noodles, and the floor has been swept recently. Ikkaku is still bandaged, but in white linen, and it’s only really a few wraps over the chest would to protect it.

He’s still in the strange mood he’s been in all week.  
  
Yumichika mentally gives up all the plans he had to work tonight, and orders sake for both of them. He sighs, waits for Ikkaku to drain the small bowl, fills it up again, and takes a sip of his own. “If this is because you’re disappointed to be alive still, I’m getting you drunk and confiscating your sword.”

 

Ikkaku glares at that, but then settles back to morose contemplation of his sake bowl. “Nah, it’s not that. It’s just - luck’s a stupid reason to survive. You can’t control luck.”  
  
Yumichika shrugs. “Well, both of us should have been dead a few times over. Maybe luck’s on our side.”

 

“Mmm.” Ikkaku downs his second bowl. “I’m still gonna find him.”

 

“And try to kill him again?” Yumichika’s voice is perfectly level, he’s sure of it, but Ikkaku looks at him sharply.

 

“Fight him again, yeah. But - I dunno. Maybe he could teach me a few things.” A pause. “It’d be all right to be killed by him.”

 

So it’s like that, Yumichika thinks. Well, at least they know Zaraki’s not in the 79th or 80th; it’ll be all uphill from here, district wise, even if they have to travel around a lot. “If you say so. I’d still kill him afterwards, though.”

 

“Eh? Don’t be daft; you’d die trying if I had already.” But Ikkaku’s smiling now, and it’s better.

 

“Maybe that’s the point,” Yumichika says. It wasn’t supposed to come out the way it did: as if he’s serious. Which he is. It’s probably the sake, which is sliding down their throats much more smoothly than usual. “You never know, though. I might get lucky.” He doesn’t want to imagine what kind of creature he’d be without Ikkaku.

 

And it seems like the sake’s affecting Ikkaku too, or maybe that was just the right thing to say, because Ikkaku leans across the table and kisses him firmly once, mouth closed. That’s probably all it was meant to be, but one of them leans in again, and Yumichika opens his lips and thinks, _Let me taste you_. He doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but the strangeness of the action is utterly overshadowed by Ikkaku, all warm and hard shoulders and familiar smell. He thinks he’d give Ikkaku anything he asked for, and this is no hardship at all; in fact it’s not nearly enough, and if thinking about what it would be like with Ikkaku is just a part of his life, then so was the thought that he’d never find out.

 

Ikkaku pulls back and blinks at him, pupils blown and one hand on Yumichika’s chest. “Yumi...I dunno if this is a great idea…”

 

What does that even mean? Hesitance: why? Ikkaku was the one who kissed him, after all these years of thinking Ikkaku didn’t want him for this, and now maybe he does, and Yumichika doesn’t understand at all. If Ikkaku wants him, he can have everything; if Ikkaku doesn’t, then why _this_?

 

Yumichika isn’t sure he’ll be able to stand it if he gives up this one chance to find out, so he swivels round and swings one leg across Ikkaku’s lap and settles there. Ikkaku’s eyes widen. “What are you - ”

 

Yumichika shuts him up with another kiss, and there’s still that hesitation in the touch and it makes him want to scream, but it only lasts a moment because Ikkaku slides one arm around his hips and one hand into his hair and _takes_. He forgets they’re even in a public place until Ikkaku’s arm tightens and he stands, lifting Yumichika with him, and Yumichika’s spinning in space with his arms around Ikkaku’s neck as Ikkaku carries him to their room. They might both be drunk but he’s not even a little afraid that Ikkaku will drop him, and sure enough Ikkaku kneels to release Yumichika onto the bed.

 

They sit on the bed, Yumichika curling around Ikkaku as close as he can, and kiss. No one ever said kissing was like this, but then again, he honestly can’t remember the last person who kissed him, and he suspects the difference is all Ikkaku. Ikkaku’s hands all over his body are inexpert but he doesn’t care; he seems to have discarded half of his ordinary procedures to just kiss and hold, and though the circling and shifting of his hips in Ikkaku’s lap is half-automatic, he’s not used to how good it feels, how much the low groans from Ikkaku’s throat please him to hear.

 

He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; just resting them on Ikkaku’s shoulders is unsatisfying, somehow. But Ikkaku lifts his hands and places them on his own chest, and - oh, he’s allowed? He slides his hands up and down Ikkaku’s back, and Ikkaku doesn’t seem to mind so he continues, stroking over shoulders and arms and everywhere he can reach. He doesn’t know why it gives him so much pleasure to map Ikkaku like this, but he’ll be able to look at Ikkaku’s back tomorrow and think, _I know what it feels like to touch_.

 

Eventually, Ikkaku’s hands find the tie of Yumichika’s obi and undo it, fumbling a little, as though Ikkaku is not used to this angle. But he manages, then pulls Yumichika’s kimono off his shoulders, and makes a soft noise at the first touch of his hands against Yumichika’s bare skin. Yumichika throws himself back into their kisses and hopes that Ikkaku will decide to take off his tunic, so they can do this skin to skin with nothing in between.

 

In a moment of boldness Yumichika presses kisses down Ikkaku’s neck and across his shoulders. Ikkaku tastes like blood and steel and just a little sweet, and Yumichika could get drunk doing this, surely. It’s confusing, because Ikkaku makes encouraging noises and puts Yumichika’s hands where he wants them, and Yumichika doesn’t know anymore what he shouldn’t do; he can’t, surely, have _everything_. But he can have Ikkaku’s taste and scent and hands on his hips and through his hair, he can have Ikkaku’s tongue in his mouth and the feel of the skin on the back of Ikkaku’s neck under his fingertips, and he’s drowning in the things he can have all of a sudden, things he never dared ask for even in the privacy of his own head. Ikkaku gives freely, and he has to push aside the urge to just hold on tight with all his strength.

 

Ikkaku does slip off his tunic then, brisk and efficient, and when he leans back into Yumichika, he can’t help but bury his face in Ikkaku’s shoulder and spend a moment just feeling, Ikkaku’s hipbones against the skin of his inner thighs, and how hard Ikkaku is underneath him. He shifts his hips experimentally, and suddenly Ikkaku is all urgency, leaning forward until Yumichika is on his back and Ikkaku’s on top of him, and Yumichika pulls the blankets over them like a cocoon. Then he reaches behind under a pillow for a small pot of oil, and hands it to Ikkaku.

 

Ikkaku swallows, and dips his fingers in. “Should I…”

 

“No,” Yumichika says. “I’m sick of waiting.” He slicks his own fingers and strokes Ikkaku’s cock, and Ikkaku tips his head back and groans for a few seconds before seeming to remember what he’s doing. He shuffles closer, and Yumichika hooks one leg over his shoulder and the other around his waist, pulling him in.

 

“Fuck,” Ikkaku swears, squeezing his eyes shut briefly. Yumichika uses the leverage of the ankle at the back of Ikkaku’s neck to pull him in for a kiss, and Ikkaku looks round at the leg over his shoulder. “Gods, you know what you’re doing, eh?” He catches Yumichika’s gaze again, but there’s no judgement at all on his face. So Yumichika smiles and tightens just the right muscles, and lifts his hips to match Ikkaku’s movements, and if Ikkaku had planned to say anything else it falls from his lips as a series of hoarse groans instead. He leans forward, seeming to believe in Yumichika’s flexibility, and slides one hand around the back of Yumichika’s neck and the other to the small of his back, holding their bodies flush together as he moves.

 

Yumichika’s eyes keep fluttering closed, but he fights to keep them open because he doesn’t want to miss a single one of Ikkaku’s pleasure-soaked expressions, or the way the muscles on his shoulders tense and flex. He doesn’t recognise half of the sounds that come out of his mouth, and he hopes that Ikkaku doesn’t either, hopes that Ikkaku can hear that there are parts of Yumichika that are hidden from everyone but him.

 

“Please,” he says, but doesn’t have the breath to finish his sentence, and it’s a little frightening because he’s so close and he doesn’t know what Ikkaku wants him to _do_. Whatever Ikkaku wants from him, it’s not the same as what everyone else wants from him; Ikkaku is holding him as if he wants to merge their bodies, as if he wants to wake up in the morning still wrapped together. “Please, I – ” he tries again, but Ikkaku fucks him a little harder and he can hardly hold words in his head. “Can I – ”

 

Ikkaku still makes a sound like, “huh?” Then he frowns for a minute and eventually manages, “Wait for me?” and it’s a question, so Yumichika says, “Yes,” and it seems to just _unravel_ Ikkaku. He gives Yumichika a hard kiss then curls his forehead into the crook of Yumichika’s neck and shoulder, saying “Yumichika, Yumichika, _god_ ,” over and over again.

 

Yumichika does close his eyes then, and throws both arms around Ikkaku’s back as tightly as he can. He holds on, and when Ikkaku’s firm, steady rhythm falters and shakes, he lets himself fall. It feels like Ikkaku’s carrying him again, and Ikkaku says, “ _Yumichika,”_ just once more as his body shudders under Yumichika’s hands.  
  
Ikkaku is lying on him, and it ought to be suffocating, but the warm weight is just comforting. It doesn’t last; Ikkaku moves, manoeuvring them both onto their sides so he can kiss Yumichika again, languid and sleepy. Yumichika resists sleep at first, but Ikkaku’s fingers play softly with his hair, and he’s warmer than he’s ever been, and after a while he lets go.

 

-

 

Waking up is glorious. Yumichika opens his eyes and he’s curled into Ikkaku’s chest, tucked under his chin, and there’s something missing. It takes him a moment to work out what it is: that lingering fear, whenever he’s touched, that he’ll be dragged away and trapped and hurt. Even when it’s Ikkaku, though Ikkaku is still safer than anyone else including no one at all – but it seems that this morning, he gets a reprieve.

 

Ikkaku makes a sleepy noise, shifts, and opens bleary eyes. “M’rnin’,” he manages, blinks a few more times, then looks down at Yumichika. “Uh…you’re naked,” he says.

 

Yumichika raises one eyebrow. “Well observed.”

 

“And – ” is that a _blush?_ Yumichika has never seen Ikkaku embarrassed before. “So am I.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Ikkaku unlatches himself and can’t quite seem to meet Yumichika’s eyes, saying things like, “Shit, where’s my clothes?”, and a cold weight begins to form in Yumichika’s stomach when Ikkaku stands and pull on clothes as quickly as possible. _Come back,_ he doesn’t say. _I was going to ask if I could kiss you good morning_.

 

Yumichika stands too, then. Ikkaku _flinches_ , and yes, Yumichika has noticed before that Ikkaku is strangely wary of seeing him naked, but now there’s not an inch of Yumichika’s body that Ikkaku’s warm, rough hands have not branded with touch, so it doesn’t make any sense.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Ikkaku blurts, fully dressed now. He keeps looking at his hands as though he’s not sure that they belong to him.

 

“What for?”

 

Ikkaku rubs his forehead above his eyebrows, and Yumichika gets a proper feel for just how distressed he is when he looks up again. “Cause – we were both drunk, but I remember _I_ kissed _you,_ and you didn’t say – I don’t even know if – ” He must pick up that Yumichika doesn’t understand a word of what he’s saying, so he continues, “You do stuff all the time that you don’t really want to do, and I don’t remember you ever saying _no_ before, and I see the way you have to make yourself sit still sometimes when people are, are, sortof all over you, and…” He clenches his fists, frustrated. “I didn’t wanna be one of those guys.”

 

“I – it’s all right,” Yumichika says, is the only thing he can think of to say. “I didn’t mind, I – that’s not why I let you fuck me.” And it was the wrong thing to say, obviously, because something in Ikkaku’s expression _breaks_ , and he looks away.

 

“But it sounds like maybe I am,” he says, and his voice is rough and breaking. “I don’t know how to make it better. If I just – I could pay you, and then maybe it’d be like just another person you could forget – ”

_No. No, no, you weren’t just another, you’ll never be just anything, take it back, say you don’t think of me like that._ He was sure, so sure, that that’s what affection feels like distilled into touch, but he hasn’t got a good handle on affection, anyway. He casts around for something to say and realises that his vision is blurry, so he takes a deep breath and swallows once, clenching every muscle he can to stay upright.

 

“You idiot; we share all the money, anyway,” is what comes out of his mouth. He’s desperate for the right thing to say, the thing that will make Ikkaku understand that it wasn’t like that at all, that Ikkaku could have anything he wanted and Yumichika gave freely, and took too, took kisses and strong hands splayed out against his back and his own name said in his ear like some sort of prayer. But he doesn’t know what it is.

 

Yumichika hates the expression on Ikkaku’s face, like he doesn’t have any idea what to do, so he turns round and picks up his kimono. It smells like sake and sex and Ikkaku, so he drops it, and fetches another.

 

“Uh, should I go?” Ikkaku says, and it’s hesitant when Ikkaku is never hesitant about anything.

_Yes. No. Don’t go, never go._ “If you want,” he says.

 

Ikkaku sighs, and his jaw clenches. “No, I mean – I wanna know if _you_ think I should go.”

 

Some part of Yumichika _panics_ at this; it’s stupid, it’s only a question, but he doesn’t know what the right answer is. “Yes,” he says eventually, because he doesn’t know how to fix this, and any pretence of being okay isn’t going to last five minutes.

 

Ikkaku nods and goes immediately. Yumichika notices how cold he is and pulls a shawl out of the drawer, then another, then puts them both back because it seems that everything he owns smells of Ikkaku. Or maybe it’s him, he thinks, caught between the desire to bathe right now and the stupid part of him that thinks he could leave the memories on his skin for just a little longer.

It’s while he’s bathing that a soft, sorrowful voice in his mind informs him that the words he was looking for were _I wanted you_.

 

-

 

He tries them on in his mind. He tries to say them out loud, but they stick in his throat. Three short words, but they taste heavy and unfamiliar, wrongness spreading across his tongue.

The idea that he _wants_ Ikkaku is – frightening, but he looks at all the things he thinks about Ikkaku and concludes that he does. He wants Ikkaku, wants everything about him, everything that there is to be had. It’s far, far too much to ask, and surely even the wanting is some sort of intrusion, some sort of expectation, and he doesn’t want Ikkaku to feel like that.

 

He tries to imagine himself saying it out loud, and can’t.

 

Yumichika supposes he’d imagined, in his sleep- and pleasure-filled haze this morning, that it’d be simple. That he could just kiss Ikkaku good morning, and maybe they’d fuck again, and he’d be able to go on with his life as usual but with Ikkaku’s arm round his waist and an ever-present invitation to touch.

 

That Ikkaku wouldn’t regret it.

 

Well, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand a fucking word that Ikkaku said, honestly; what does the fact that his job isn’t all sunshine and roses have to do with the sex that they had? Why would Ikkaku try to _pay_ him, and say that he wants Yumichika to forget about it? Surely, that’s regret.

 

Yumichika has no idea how Ikkaku expects him to just forget. _You can’t fuck me like you love me and just leave, Ikkaku. You can’t._

  
 _Please, please don’t._

 

He’d thought maybe Ikkaku had got used to the idea that he’s a whore – had decided that maybe it didn’t matter and Ikkaku wanted him anyway – but clearly this isn’t true. He fucks people for money, but he slept with Ikkaku because...

  
He ought to admit it in the privacy of his own head, really. Lying to himself won’t get him anywhere.

  
He slept Ikkaku because he wanted to. He still wants to, still wants Ikkaku more than any single other thing that he can think of. And for a few hours Yumichika felt like Ikkaku wanted just as much as he does. Was that feeling a lie?

 

God, he wants that feeling again. Would kneel at Ikkaku’s feet and beg forgiveness for whatever the hell it is he did wrong, to get that feeling back. Ikkaku, he’s sure, would just look at him like he’s crazy and ask him what the hell he was doing.

 

But Ikkaku is the one who apologised. Apologised for what they did, but that doesn’t make any sense _either._ Why would he apologise for sex? Sure, Yumichika’s been forced before, but no one who did that looked like they were remotely sorry.

 

Yumichika doesn’t _want_ a fucking apology; he just wants Ikkaku to hold him again and stop looking at him like he’s broken.   

 

He can’t have any of the things he wants. He preferred not wanting things; it was easier.

To make things worse, the hunger is gone. Well – perhaps not gone. He closes his eyes and breathes, and tries to feel: no, it’s not gone, it’s just sitting quiescent somewhere inside. He feels almost as if he could reach out and touch the source –

 

But if the hunger is gone, how did he feed?

 

He must have taken from Ikkaku, he thinks, and the urge to curl up on the floor and wrap his arms around his knees is overwhelming. Must have; nothing else that he knows of will sate it. If he took from Ikkaku…

_We did not take,_ he hears from that same place inside, louder than usual, and there’s the ghost of feathery touch on his shoulders which should be unsettling, but isn’t. _He gave willingly, and we received_.

 

Somehow, that thought is worse than all the others combined. Yumichika gives in, curls up under his bedcovers, and tries to get warm.

 

-

 

It's dusk by the time he wakes up, and Ikkaku still isn't back from wherever he went. Yumichika shouldn't worry, really; Ikkaku can take care of himself, and the only man who ever posed a threat is - well. Ikkaku is looking for him.

 

Yumichika is entirely unused to how hard he wishes he could curl into Ikkaku's chest again. He's used to the desire of course, sitting in the back of his head and settling into quiescence whenever Ikkaku would climb in beside him on cold nights. But it's as if that one night has unleashed a flood of want, and he can hardly think past it.

 

It's a lot like the hunger at its worst, but only for Ikkaku.

 

If he thinks about it, he remembers that it was Ikkaku who woke the hunger in him, too.

 

Yumichika steels himself, counts three, and makes himself stand, comb his still-damp hair, don a kimono. He has no more time for the mess that is his mind at present: there's been deep pools of horrors in his head for as long as he can remember, and he's become adept at stepping around them. This is just - another thing he doesn't want to immobilise himself thinking about. There is rent to be paid, and Yumichika will be damned if he's pathetic enough to just lie in bed and wait for it to be over, or something. If he'd gut himself for Ikkaku, he can do his fucking job to keep them both fed.

 

Even if it's harder, out here, because they're travelling up district and every time they do their money will be worth less, because there's not much demand for anything except a rough facefuck in an alley, and maybe he shouldn't have allowed himself to get used to the bed that he still misses.

 

At least it will be almost incomparable to his night with Ikkaku. Yumichika hadn't known that sex could be a desire and pleasure of the mind as well as the body.

 

There is little in the way of hunger even now, and that will make it harder still.

 

It's an ugly place, the bar he goes to - but then everything in the 78th is ugly. Yumichika will be happy if he never has to come back here. There are days where he seeks out rough places with violence and blood and brutish men, but today he would wish for the classiest place the 65th offers, because he can flirt on autopilot and find more people who want to admire than ruin him.

 

Everything would be easier if he could just cut out the part of him that wishes and wants and hopes. But he's tried that and everything went by in a numb haze, until eventually he found someone who wanted to slice his skin open, so he broke their neck with his thighs and finally, finally felt rushingly alive again.

 

The barman doesn't mind if he takes people to the storeroom and fucks them, as long as Yumichika pays him - in a blow job at the end of the night rather than money, fortunately, because he'll be damned if he's letting anyone else take a cut like that ever again.  

 

He doesn't know what it is, but everyone wants him tonight. It seems he's a novelty; maybe he's more beautiful than they're used to in the whores round here, where almost everyone looks too thin or worn or has had their face broken a few times; maybe he looks classy, like some exotic thing from up district that they want to make a mess of; maybe it's just that he's good at his job and the walls are thin.

 

It's all easier than he'd thought it might be. At least, it is at first; slowly, his stomach and throat begin to clench, and he gags a bit unexpectedly, which hasn't happened in years. He combats this by getting drunk. It takes effort, but at least he doesn't have to pay. Even here people feel the need to make overtures with a pint of shitty beer they bought you, and for once Yumichika is grateful. He doesn't really understand - people generally feel no compulsion to comfort the pig they're about to slaughter for bacon, or leave behind cups of tea when they buy clothes at a stall.

 

He's spent most of his life around people, but there's still so much he doesn't understand. Maybe he would if he'd been taken in by a family, but he was too old for that, really, when he arrived. There's so much that Ikkaku has taught him - why people collect into families in the first place, what kissing is for, how it feels to know the smell of another person, and why sometimes people whisper names into his ear that aren't his, sounding like longing.

 

And maybe it's wrong or distasteful to think of Ikkaku while there’s another man's cock halfway down his throat, but it doesn't feel as unpleasant as he expected because Ikkaku and this man, this experience and that one, feel so entirely unconnected. Maybe that's because he's drunk and his face has started to go numb, but thinking of Ikkaku is safe and warm and affection (but oh, has he broken it? If he has then he has to fix it somehow, has to, he'll go mad if he doesn't and he hopes with all his strength that he'll get home to find Ikkaku asleep on the ratty futon because, if all else fails, he can just sit on Ikkaku and say things like, _please, please make it all right, I'd do whatever you want, I don't know what you want so please tell me)._

 

At least he (maybe) gets to be the only person for whom Ikkaku means safety, and that's much more than he would ever ask for, much more than he deserves.

 

At the end of the night there's a small group of them left. The barman locks the door and shoves tables together, and they all share him and pass him around till he's dizzy and short of breath and can't seem to focus on anything for long enough to make it out. People duck in and out of the circle, becoming temporary spectators and chucking coins at him. He gasps and swallows and blinks water out of his eyes, and this is why he left his makeup habit back in the 65th, he thinks, clutching the edges of the table because they remind him which way is up.

 

Walking home takes far longer than it should and no time at all, because all of the muscles that he can feel are hurting and the rest won't work, but he's drunk and time is relative. When he stumbles through the door, Ikkaku is there, and he whirls around immediately.

 

"Yumichika," he says, as if Yumichika's been missing for weeks or something. "I - what's up with you?"

 

Yumichika half-leans and half-falls forwards, siccing a mound of coins onto the table from the folds of his kimono, right in front of Ikkaku. "I'm drunk," he explains. "And I can't feel my legs." Then he leans his hands on the table to prop himself up, and makes himself meet Ikkaku's eyes despite the expression on Ikkaku's face. "But I made enough money that we can leave this ugly place." He tries to feel proud of collecting so much money in one night he could hardly carry it, even if it's in wooden bits that won't be worth a thing anywhere above the 76th, but he can't with the way Ikkaku's looking at him, as if he might be sick.

 

Ikkaku makes a reaching gesture but changes his mind as soon as he notices it, snatching his hand back. Yumichika looks at it and waits for Ikkaku to say something. Anything. He's beginning, almost, to wish he hadn't kissed Ikkaku again, or that he'd done whatever it was he was supposed to do, because he can remember a time when Ikkaku would have come round his side of the table, close but a few careful inches apart in case it was one of those nights where Yumichika couldn't bear to be touched, and said, "Let's go to bed, ne?"

 

"I didn't know if - I didn't know where you were," Ikkaku says. Which doesn't explain what's wrong, or why Ikkaku's looking at him like that. And maybe he's disgusting, but Ikkaku has held his hair back from his face while he threw up and cried after a bad night, one large hand making circles between his shoulderblades, so it can't be that. Ikkaku looks as him like you look at something ugly, and Yumichika's motivation to continue propping himself up liquefies. He ends up on the floor, too drunk and confused to remember why he shouldn't curl his arms around his legs and press his forehead against his knees.

 

He feels motion, and when he looks up, Ikkaku is sitting next to him, legs crossed. "I don't get you at all, sometimes," he says.

  
Everything is blurry, confusing, shifting in front of his eyes and inside his head. "You're looking at me like I'm ugly," he says, and it comes out slurred and indistinct. Ikkaku knows what he said, though; he can tell by the flinch. "You've never done that before."

 

"No," Ikkaku says. "It ain't - you just look so - " So what? Drunk? Dirty? "Miserable," Ikkaku finishes.

 

"I don't know what I did wrong," he says, to the floor. "Are you going to leave? Please, please don't leave, come with me back to the 65th and then you can go if you like - " he can't seem to stop talking, but Ikkaku interrupts.

 

"Oi, I ain't going anywhere!" Ikkaku says, and it's the first thing he's said in days that isn't hesitant or confused, so Yumichika has to believe him. "Don't even say that."

 

Yumichika swallows. "Then I have to fix it. I have to - you're going to have to tell me how, Ikkaku, I don't know what I did wrong but I'll do anything you want - "

 

"Don't say that either!" Ikkaku says, but he's started and now he can't stop, brokenly repeating himself, _please, please tell me how to fix it tell me what I did wrong I needtofixitdon’tlookatmelikethatI'msorryI'msorryIloveyoudon'thatemeIloveyoucanwefixitdon'tleavepleasedon-tleave_ and at some point he stopped making any sense at all but it doesn't matter because he's lying against Ikkaku's chest again, and he panics momentarily because he's disgusting and tries to pull his hair back, or something, butt Ikkaku just says, "Fuck, Yumichika, none of this is your fault, alright? You ain't got to do anything." Finally, Yumichika manages to stop talking. He's making Ikkaku's tunic wet but Ikkaku doesn't seem to care.

 

"Let's go to bed," he says, helping Yumichika to stand, and maybe it's going to be all right.

 

Yumichika's half asleep, finally able to relax with Ikkaku's clothes tangled in his fists, when Ikkaku starts talking again. "As if I'd go anywhere: the hell would I do without you? Y'know, I never had a pair of shoes till I met you. Still can't get used to socks..." He clears his throat. "Uh, anyway, I'm sorry. I was tryin' to...eh, it doesn't matter now. I fucked it. You don't got to do anything to fix it except still be here in the morning."

 

Yumichika's too tired to say anything, so he just makes a tighter fist.

 

-

 

Ikkaku is still there in the morning, tunic half-hanging off him because apparently Yumichika has been holding on to it all night.

 

It's been a long time since he was last so appallingly drunk; people buy him drinks all the time, and his tolerance is high. It took a lot of effort to become so graceless and incoherent, he remembers, and then he made a fool of himself all over Ikkaku. Still, Ikkaku is here, groaning and stumbling groggily towards wakefulness, and maybe things are better now, so perhaps he can be forgiven.

 

The first thing Ikkaku says, after looking at Yumichika for ten seconds straight, bleary and trying to focus, is, "You smell like shit beer."

 

 _And worse  besides_. Yumichika remembers how disgusting he is, and shivers. "I'm going for a shower," he says, standing quickly, but Ikkaku catches his hand.

 

"Let's leave today. Head for the 77th," he says.

 

Yumichika turns back round, smiling, and says "I'll pack."

 

So they go. They go, and don't stop for more than a day or two, while Ikkaku goes out and asks around and Yumichika goes to work.

 

-

 

He has to tell Ikkaku, of course. Has to.  
  
He tries it on: _I found out where Kenpachi No Zaraki has gone; he’s in the Seireitei_.

 

Ikkaku is going to want to go immediately, of course. And Yumichika can’t say that he has any particular desire to stay in this particular place, or even in this district, but - the Seireitei.   _But - I dunno. Maybe he could teach me a few things,_ Yumichika remembers, and that sounds like maybe they’re going to stay. Are they going to stay? And do what - become shinigami?  
  
He shudders. _Shinigami cunts_ , Ikkaku said the first time they ever spoke. Not a single thing Yumichika has ever seen has disproved this. They’re powerful and dangerous and Yumichika would feel safer sleeping in an alley in the 70s than in a bed in the Seireitei, surrounded by all those tall cold powerhouses of reiatsu. Some of them were never even born in the living world, a little removed from really being _people_. He can feel them, sometimes, when they visit whichever district he’s in, and he feels a little like a tuning fork, lying in his bed as the precise tone of their reiatsu keeps him awake from miles away.

 

 _We could be powerful and dangerous too,_ he hears, and the sound is - breathless, urgent in a way he doesn’t recognise. _We are already powerful and dangerous_.

 

He’s not, honestly, sure why he’s even thinking about this. There wasn’t a question about which choice he’d make - and it was a choice. He’s made unpleasant choices before, often enough to know that it’s always a choice, even if only one of the options are bearable. The only option in this case that is bearable involves following Ikkaku wherever Ikkaku wants them to go, and that’s all there is to it.  
  
Yumichika has always found that the ones called “Hard Choices” are the easiest.

 

So he sits down without preamble while Ikkaku is getting through breakfast, and says, “He’s in the Seireitei. He went and killed the last Kenpachi, so he’s captain of the eleventh now.” Ikkaku looks right at him, and puts down his rice. “Probably so he can fight as much as he likes; there’s no one here to match him.”

 

Ikkaku frowns. “He’s gonna protect this shitty place? I don’t see it.” He stands and picks up his sword - apparently they’re leaving _right now,_ which - well, fine. It’s morning, they’ve both eaten, and they can make it to the next District by nightfall.

 

“I take it we’re going after him, then?” He says, and he can’t keep a smile off his face, because this is going to be one hell of a trip, but Ikkaku looks positively gleeful.

 

“Fuck, yes. He could be in hell for all I care.” He tucks his sword into his belt, and Yumichika mimics him, heading to his room to grab his handful of things. He keeps having to leave them behind, and supposes he’s been losing all ties to this place for years.

 

It’s not until they’re in a bar at the start of the 62nd that Yumichika manages to ask about the thing that’s been bothering him most. “So...are we going to become Shinigami? Just to get to Kenpachi?”

 

Ikkaku tilts his head. “It’s the only way to get in,” he says, and Yumichika wonders, suddenly, how much he knows about Shinigami, and how he knows it.

 

“But - ” He’s not sure how to ask this one. _We’re not going to have to fight to the death like Kenpachi, are we?_ Is just tempting fate. “Will we be let in? How do they pick shinigami?”

 

Ikkaku shrugs. “Mostly it’s assholes from the first twenty districts. But they’ll take anyone with decent reiatsu.” He looks at Yumichika intently for a minute, and it’s the same look he gives to opponents he’s sizing up; he’s never looked at Yumichika like this before. “Anyway, you got nothing to be worried about. You’ve felt shinigami around: don’t you know you’ve got more reiatsu than most? Your sword work’s fucking vicious too, you’d cut most of ‘em to pieces soon as look at you.”

 

Yumichika blinks. He hasn’t ever given much thought to his own reiatsu. He feels himself blush a little, a counterpoint to the smug _I told you so_ in his mind. He must admit, there’s an appeal to spending the rest of his life fighting.

 

Because it is the rest of his life; if they become shinigami now, they’ll die shinigami. He looks at Ikkaku. Well, Ikkaku is better than him, so Yumichika will die first, likely. So that’s all right.

 

He swallows, because there is one last thing to take care of. “Cut my hair,” he says.

 

Ikkaku’s eyes bug out absurdly, like a caricature, as if this is the most ridiculous thing Yumichika could possibly say. “Eh? But - you - you love your hair, and I…” He looks down. “We don’t have any scissors.”

 

Yumichika rolls his eyes. “It’s not going to be any use to me if I’m a shinigami. Just match here,” he says, indicating the shorter pieces at his shoulders. “And use your sword.”

 

Ikkaku looks panicked. “But - what if I fuck it up?”  
  
Yumichika pins him with a glare that is half manufactured, honestly, because if Ikkaku’s dragging him to the Seireitei then payback is fair. “Don’t.”

 

“And you’ll still speak to me in the morning if I don’t get it perfect?”

 

 _Hair grows, Ikkaku._ Yumichika smiles pleasantly. “Of course,” he says, and Ikkaku swallows nervously. He’d laugh, but - it doesn’t seem like the time for it. His hair is a part of his body, part of his body _language_ , and some percent of the reason why he’s so good at his job, why so many people wanted. _Such pretty hair_ has been said to him so, so many times.

 

There’s a mirror in their room, which isn’t surprising because this is the 62nd, home of debauchery. He should be right at home, but isn’t. Ikkaku makes a determined expression as he stands behind Yumichika and undoes his hair tie. Yumichika shivers when Ikkaku combs his fingers through it, and if there were ever a reason not to do this it would be that feeling. _Get on with it, Ikkaku, before I change my mind._

 

Ikkaku picks up his sword, and Yumichika has to close his eyes.

 

He feels…lighter, afterwards. The ends of his hair brush the back of his neck, and he runs his fingers through it. It feels straight enough; he feels bereft. He offers a smile, though, because Ikkaku appears to be holding his breath. “Thank you,” he says, and Ikkaku deflates.

 

He wipes his brow. “Right. Well, I’m going to bed.”

 

Yumichika looks at himself in the mirror. It’s going to take some getting used to. It’s only the first of many things that he’s going to have to get used to.

 

And then, so definite and loud that he’s momentarily certain that the voice is coming from right behind him rather than his head, a verdict: _Beautiful_.

 

He removes his sword from his belt, places it by the bed, and curls up next to Ikkaku. Tomorrow, they’ll be getting up early again, but Ikkaku rolls over and mashes his face against Yumichika’s shoulder, and he’s all right.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been one hell of a ride and no mistake. If you got this far, wow, thank you so much for coming along with me.
> 
> Don't worry, I'm not ending here: there's going to be another fic, covering more of Bleach canon, about Yumichika in the 11th. It's currently in progress with the provisional title 'Retrograde'
> 
> Until then, I can be found wittering about Bleach and writing and other stuff at vorvayne.tumblr.com. And I promise the rest of my work is normally a *bit* cheerier :)

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found at vorvayne.tumblr.com wittering about bleach a lot, and I promise the rest of my work is normally a *bit* cheerier.


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